On our recent calls, we spent considerable time talking about the impact of the election on the legislative agenda, but we didn’t talk much about the executive branch. In addition to enforcement and interpretation of existing laws by the agencies, a very significant area is the use of executive orders, which has stepped up considerably in recent years under both parties. As we have seen on DACA, executive orders have become a vehicle for achieving goals stymied by a gridlocked Congress.
In the Obama presidency, executive orders were used to impose conditions on federal contracts—such as paid sick leave—as a substitute for stalled employment legislation. An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last Friday by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) may provide some clues as to what a Biden presidency could mean for federal contractors. While the thrust of the op-ed was to hold large companies’ feet to the fire on recent pledges on corporate social responsibility and social justice, consider the various expectations that Senator Brown raised in his op-ed for corporations in the current social justice climate and ask yourself how many of these could be imposed as federal contract requirements:
- “Raise base pay for all employees to a living wage for the area where each business is located, a minimum of $15 an hour.”
- “Stop forcing people to choose between their jobs and their families. Grant paid sick days and paid family leave to all employees.”
- “Implement the strictest safety standards to protect workers from Covid-19 and to protect them from workplace injuries and future infectious-disease outbreaks.”
- “Give employees power over their lives and schedules. Guarantee them advance notice of and input over their work schedules, so they can plan day-care pickups and doctor’s appointments and transportation. Pay workers when they work overtime or odd hours.”
- “Diversify your top executives and corporate boards. A tiny group of mostly white men shouldn’t be making decisions that affect the livelihoods of millions of diverse workers.”
- “End the ‘independent contractor’ business model that absolves you of responsibility for your workers. If you have hundreds of ‘independent contractors,’ those are your employees, and you need to treat them that way.”
- “Allow workers to save for retirement, and help them do it. Match contributions to retirement accounts for all your employees, not just white-collar, salaried workers.”
- “Stop fighting your employees’ efforts to form unions. Stay neutral in all union elections and stop pressuring workers who dare to organize.”
- “Take responsibility for your actions. End the push for corporate immunity laws and drop the forced arbitration clauses that deny your employees the ability to hold their employers accountable when they’re mistreated.”
- “Pay your fair share. Stop lobbying Congress for yet more tax breaks, and stop shoveling money into political campaigns to defeat anyone who disagrees.”
This could actually wind up keeping us at least as busy as we may be on legislative activity. Good fodder for discussions at our fall conference on December 9.