We’ve repeatedly heard how “excessive and unnecessary regulations” are hampering business from growing and producing jobs. That’s a key Trump mantra. So he’s promised that he’ll “cut” those regulations and do so without harming workers, consumers or the environment because who in their right mind would want to mess that up just so a few share holders can make an extra buck?
Trump and the GOP would.
The measure rolls back an order signed by President Obama, known as the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, that required any company bidding on a contract of $500,00 or more to disclose labor law violations over the last three years. Those disclosures then had to be taken into account during the bidding process.
“It’s essentially a deterrent,” explained Joseph Geevarghese, campaign director at Good Jobs Nation, a group that organized extensively in favor of the executive order. “Major companies who want to do business with the federal government, which is incredibly lucrative, will think twice about breaking the law across the board.”
“The signal Donald Trump is sending today…is it’s okay to break the law, you will continue to get taxpayer dollars,” said Geevarghese. “There is no consequence for violating the rights of American workers.”
And it wasn’t just wage violations it was safety violations too. So what is the rationale here, if you’ve screwed over your employees we don’t want to know that when deciding to give you another contract? And it’s not like this is a small problem.
I mean, it’s not like anything might go terribly, horribly wrong, right? When has that ever happened?
Continued.
The impetus to fix or altogether avoid wage or safety violations will now disappear. “This takes away any positive incentive for firms to tighten their operations, make sure workers are respected,” Geevarghese said.
A large share of companies that work for the federal government have spotty records on how they treat their employees. According to research by Demos, a New York-based think tank, approximately 40 percent of the money the government spent on federal contracts between 1999 and 2013 went to companies with records of violating health and safety or wage and hour laws. Contractors were fined nearly $722 million for these violations, or 12 percent of all fines paid by U.S. businesses.
Nearly 12,000 companies that receive federal contracts have violated wage and hour laws, illegally underpaying more than 300,000 people, according to a report prepared by the staff of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a supporter of Obama’s measure. Nearly 700 are repeat offenders but still receive government work. Among the 100 largest government contractors—which combined received $240 billion for their work—two-thirds of them have violated labor laws.
Oh boy, let’s have more of that. Because why in the world would we want to uphold and enforce wage and safety laws? We’ve got to get cracking with bringing back the coal jobs, the horse and buggy, building big giant pipelines full of tar-sands crude oil — but don’t bother us a about a history of pesky safety violations, Who cares about that?