Democrats are looking at ways to ensure that companies they say violate labor laws, such as Amazon.com Inc., don’t receive federal contracting dollars, resurrecting an Obama-era policy that was blocked during the Trump administration.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), long known for his support of workers and unions, told reporters after a Senate Budget Committee hearing Thursday that they’re “working on a number of directions to get this done.”
The question of how to bar labor and employment law violators from holding federal contracts dates back at least to the Obama administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which Congress scrapped in 2017. Opponents dubbed the mandate—which required businesses bidding on federal contracts worth $500,000 or more to disclose labor and employment law violations, among other workplace information—the contractor “blacklisting” order.
A National Labor Relations Board judge last month found that Amazon illegally fired a worker who tried to improve the company’s Covid-19 safety protocols.
But the Biden administration and Congress must tread carefully if they aim to bring back a similar “blacklisting” policy. The Obama order was blocked by Republican lawmakers using the Congressional Review Act, which bars any “substantially” similar policies.
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