Mandating Responsible Sourcing in Federal Contracting
Creating Worker Power with Government Contracting and Spending Policy
This is the seventh in an 11-part series on labor policy for the Green New Deal. As a trade union lawyer and climate activist, I believe we need to have a bold plan for climate action coupled with rewriting the rules governing our economy. In the spirit of Bernie’s Green New Deal policy (although written independently and before its release), this series proposes specific policy solutions to advance worker power alongside environmental stewardship.
(4) to achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization, a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects— . . .
(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition[.][1]
Mandate Responsible Sourcing in Federal Contracting
Government sourcing should help solve the problem. The GND should incorporate responsible sourcing requirements for major acquisitions, including subsidy programs, which require three things: Buy Clean, local hire, and minimum apprenticeship requirements.
A. Require Buy Clean Standards
While many other contracting standards deal with responsible labor standards, Buy Clean deals with responsible material sourcing. It requires government agencies to give preferential sourcing treatment to certain materials that meet minimum environmental and labor standards. This fixes the “carbon loophole” that results from imported manufactured materials, which up to 25% of the world’s emissions pass through.[1] Many policies have been suggested to fix this,[2] but Buy Clean is a way to ensure that the federal government’s procurement is part of the solution. Many states are considering similar ideas,[3] and they are popular politically.[4]
For example, a public project that sourced materials like steel, glass, insulation, wood, or concrete would have suppliers bid to supply that material for the project. As part of their bid, they would disclose certain labor and environmental information, including the carbon emissions related to their product. The materials would be required to meet minimum labor and environmental standards, or else the supplier could not bid on the project. These Buy Clean standards would automatically be improved over time, through periodic agency reviews.
That is essentially how it works in California, but limited to carbon emissions. California recently implemented a Buy Clean policy, which begins to take effect in 2019. Starting on July 1, 2019, bidders will have to submit a specific Environmental Product Declaration under an international standard for life cycle carbon emission analysis, for each material proposed to be used. The specification for bids issued by each contracting agency will include the maximum global warming potential for any eligible material, and the bidders have to be under that maximum. And by January 1, 2022, California will reassess and strengthen its standards, with the goal of continuously reducing emissions over time.[5]
The GND should implement a Buy Clean standard modelled off the California Buy Clean standard, but should go further in one regard. In addition to requiring strict carbon emission standards, it should require that all suppliers meet certain labor standards. Specifically, suppliers should be disqualified if they committed a non-trivial violation of labor and employment standards. The United States should work with organized labor and the International Labour Organization to develop ways to measure and track labor and employment violations globally—perhaps through a strict third-party certification program of ILO international labor standards[6] run by global union federations.
By adopting strong Buy Clean standards, the GND can ensure that the thousands or millions of tons of steel, cement, iron, insulation, and other material that we will need to build turbines, retrofit houses, and update infrastructure are not contributing to the climate crisis or the oppression of workers.
B. Require Local Hire Standards
Local hire standards are government contracting rules that require a percentage of the employees on a job site to be from the local area. Many communities across the country have adopted such rules, and they typically require between 20% and 50% of workers to be local. Many have differential standards for apprentices and journeypersons. The targets are often established by trade, and they are often based on the hours worked on a project.
Local hire corrects for a few issues. First, it ensures that the jobs created by government contracting go to people in the communities in which that money is flowing, reducing economic inequality, creating opportunity, and injecting money into the local economy. Second, it can be a tool to expand opportunities for people of color, to require that job opportunities are fairly distributed.
The GND should adopt a nationwide local hire provision, based on three principles. The first principle is that local hire target should begin at a moderate level and hit an ambitious final target, with different standards for apprentices and journeypersons. For example, San Francisco set its target at 20% for journeypersons, to increase by 5% a year and which is now fixed at 30%; the corresponding apprenticeship requirement is 50%. This strong policy was successful: in 2018, it resulted in 36% of journeyperson hours and 54% of apprentice hours to be local.[7] The GND should adopt a similar, ambitious standard, starting at requiring 15% of journeyperson hours in each trade on all federal-supported projects to be local, and increasing by 5% a year until 30%, as well as requiring 50% of all apprentice hours to be local.
Second, local hire should apply initially based on counties, tribal nations, and large cities, say above 100,000 or 250,000 people. However, the policy should make allowances for lower-population areas, by allowing the Department of Labor to combine multiple low-population counties into one local hire counting area. The Department of Labor should also be allowed to reduce targets where they exceed the capacity of the area to be met.
Finally, local hire should allow states to co-determine important aspects of the local hire provision, including adding disadvantaged or targeted hire requirements. To that end, the law should allow states and tribes to adopt State Plans subject to DOL approval and minimum standards, to create a tailored policy based on local conditions.[8]
By adopting a strong local hire provision, the GND can ensure that the economic opportunity created by the GND is widely shared, that high-paying jobs and high-quality job training are available to all, and that rural and isolated communities can fully enjoy these benefits.
C. Require Minimum Apprenticeship Standards
Many states’ contracting requirements include minimum apprenticeship standards, which require contractors to use a certain ratio or percentage of apprentices to journeypersons. For example, Maine’s recent Green New Deal proposal included a 25% apprenticeship ratio, requiring that 25% of workers on certain projects be apprentices by 2027.[9]
Minimum apprenticeship standards allow governments to propose worker training and ensure that the pipeline of skilled tradespersons continues. As we head towards a construction worker shortage, it is more important now than ever to build in apprenticeship requirements, to train those workers of the future.
The Green New Deal should establish a minimum apprenticeship range that all projects must meet unless they receive a waiver from the Department of Labor. A tripartite commission of DOL, organized labor, and employers in each trade should develop a manageable minimum apprenticeship standard which will apply on every federal-supported construction project, which must be within a range established in the law, say 10% to 25%. Only apprentices from registered apprenticeship programs would be eligible to meet the target.
Waiver of those standards should be permitted, but only on specific projects, and with the consent of all three parties. While waiver is usually seen as weakening the standard, here there is a legitimate concern that with the amount of federal investment at issue, it may be unworkable to require every project to meet strict apprenticeship standards. In addition, since each of these projects will already be operating under an enhanced PLA, building in a waiver provision gives labor and contractors flexibility in their bargaining relationship.
By creating a minimum apprenticeship standard, the GND can be a training engine for the future while supporting one of America’s highest-quality education programs: registered apprenticeships.
If you have thoughts on this subject, I’d love to hear them. Hit me up on Twitter or email.
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[1] KGM & Associates et al, The Carbon Loophole in Climate Policy (Aug. 2018), https://buyclean.org/media/2016/12/The-Carbon-Loophole-in-Climate-Policy-Final.pdf.
[2]See, e.g., Renilde Becqué, Europe’s Carbon Loophole, ClimateWorks Found. (Sept. 2017), https://www.climateworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/EU-carbon-loophole_final-draft-for-consultation.pdf.
[3]See BlueGreen Alliance, Buy Clean, https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/work-issue/buy-clean/.
[4] Julian Brave NoiseCat & Sean McElwee, Buy Clean Reduces Emissions, Empowers Unions and Is Popular, Data for Progress (May 22, 2019), https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2019/5/22/buy-clean-reduces-emissions-empowers-unions-and-is-popular.
[5]See Cal. AB-262, Buy Clean California Act (2017), https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB262.
[6] Int’l Labour Organization, Rules of the Game (2019), https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---normes/documents/publication/wcms_672549.pdf.
[7]See San Francisco Office of Econ. & Workforce Dev., San Francisco Local Hiring Policy for Construction 2017/2018 Annual Report (2019), https://oewd.org/sites/default/files/Workforce/Workforce%20Collateral/2018%20Local%20Hiring%20Policy%20Annual%20Report%206.22.18.pdf.
[8] OSHA provides a workable example for this type of proposal, as states are permitted to develop state plans with DOL approval and subject to DOL standards. See generally Dep’t of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Admin., State Plan Policies and Procedures Manual, CSP 01-00-0004 (Sept. 22, 2015), https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/directives/CSP_01-00-004.pdf.
[9]See Maine H.P. 924, An Act to Establish a Green New Deal for Maine (2019); C-A (H-413) (2019), available at http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/display_ps.asp?LD=1282&snum=129.