I always thought the lawyer rating business was a scam mostly directed at lawyers.
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Here is a follow up to a blog I wrote last month. I am puzzled why the Wage & Hour Division (“WHD”) would ever think it proper to withhold money from the prime contractor where the SCA clauses or wage determinations were originally left out of the government contract. One of the WHD duties is to not withhold money from the contractor for issues which relate to changes in the contract which were ordered by the Government. That is a breach of contract. Instead, This adjustment must be paid for by the procuring agency, and that means funding the change order and paying for the cost of the increased wages and benefits arising from the correction of the Government’s own errors.
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Here is my tribute to The Maltese Falcon and the stuff that dreams are made of.
Read MoreWhen a Service Contract Act (“SCA”) wage determination (“WD”) is omitted from a covered Government service contract and then added into the contract after award, that triggers a right to a price adjustment under the Changes clause, which adjustment includes overhead, G&A and profit.
Read MoreFor many government contractors, benefit plans are the more cost‑effective, employee friendly, and compliant solution. But the ultimate decision is a business judgment, and there are circumstances where it is easier to pay the cash fringes.
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New Service Contract Act (“SCA”) health and welfare (“H&W’) rates for 2026 - 2027 have supposedly been determined but I cannot find any public official DOL announcement.
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With the Secretary of Labor’s resignation, the path cleared for Keith Sonderling to take the Department reigns more formally.
Read MoreThe misbegotten Biden-era attempt to apply the Davis-Bacon Act (“DBA”) by operation of law to contracts that omit the clauses and wage determinations is likely to soon be completely dead. And if you are a trucker or materialman business bringing goods to a DBA covered work site, you are now less likely to be caught up regulatory web and covered by the DBA.
Read MoreDOL and state labor departments are eyeing this summer’s FIFA World Cup events and monitoring wage and hour enforcement while trying to guide employers. Personally, I am skipping the Seattle event.
Read MoreIt has been a long 41-year largely continuous run, but I have decided to hang my instructor gig up in 2026. Tomorrow, I will teach my last virtual seminar for Federal Publications. And this summer I will teach my last in-person live session. All things must pass. Here is a thank you to all my students.
Read MoreSlotting and conformance are two distinct processes under the SCA and DBA used by both DOL and contractors to determine appropriate wage rates for employees when the provided WD does not explicitly list a specific job title. Slotting is the process of mapping a job to an existing, similar classification found in the WD based on comparable duties and skills. Conformance is a formal process used when no suitable classification exists in the WD, requiring the creation of a new, approved labor category and rate..
Read MoreIt is the inaugural National Apprenticeship Week (“NAW”), so let’s review the events this week at DOL.
Read MoreAn employee who was tasked by the company CEO to audit the company’s SCA compliance, who found that the company was not compliant, and who allegedly was fired after repeatedly rebuking the CEO for the allegedly knowing noncompliance, could not bring a qui tam action, because conducting the audit became part of his normal duties once the CEO instructed him to conduct it. See U.S. ex rel. Irizarry v. Innovative Technologies, Inc., 2025 WL 2298711 (D.D.C. 2025).
Read MoreThe Trump Administration -- whether due to incompetence, malfeasance, ideological opposition, or plain obstinate refusal to obey the rule of law -- has failed to publish new 2026 civil money penalties (“CMPs”) for the wage and hour laws which were required to be issued by January 15th.
Read MoreAround age 65 the American Bar Association (“ABA”) automatically enrolls you in the so-called Senior Law Section. They also send you a magazine with all kinds of articles with headings urging you to “Stop Practicing Law You Fool Before You Malpractice or Get Sick.”
Read MoreCount me as one who hates change. I find the so-called “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul to be unnecessary, confusing, and likely to lead to more not less procurement disputes.
Read MoreA client asked me to write a step-by-step guide to Davis-Bacon Act (“DBA”) conformances. A conformance is the process for setting a prevailing wage and fringe benefit standard for job positions missing from a wage determination. This blog is meant for practitioners and contractors who must deal with conformances. It is an a summary adapted from my prior work product.
Read MoreIs roll call time compensable working time and included in the overtime calculation? The answer is ordinarily yes, and particularly so if you define it as working time in your CBA. Maybe there is an exemption you can fall in, but you have to meet the requirements of the exemption to avoid coverage.
Read MoreThe legal bots are coming for my job. Last year some crawler pored over my 200+ wage and hour blogs at www.awrcounsel.com and devoured them into some large language model/library of knowledge. I am the instrument of my own destruction! As the saying goes, most of us contain the seeds of our own destruction.
Read MoreIt is the last day of an eventful year. I thought I would try my hand at predicting what happens in the government contract world in 2026.
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