Overview of the issue:

In November, Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and federal agencies are in the process of distributing this funding. The federal government has a goal of working to improve job quality, empower workers and create good jobs. The majority of the infrastructure funding will be distributed via grants and the federal government has designed these grant programs to ensure that investments meet their goals to improve job quality.

Specifically, federal agencies are encouraging or requiring applicants to include plans for high-quality training programs to support their proposed projects, and asking applicants to include additional labor standards (i.e. prevailing wage, registered apprentices and local hire provisions). Applications will be evaluated based on the inclusion of these labor standards. Applicants that include these labor standards will be scored higher than applicants that do not.

In February, the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment issued a report with nearly 70 recommendations for policies, practices, and programs that should be adopted by the federal government to support worker organizing and collective bargaining. One of the recommendations in the report is that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issue guidance to ensure good jobs. Specifically, the report urged OMB to work with stakeholders and agencies to 1) ensure financial assistance programs appropriately address job quality and worker empowerment issues, and 2) further explore and identify opportunities to update the Uniform Guidance to empower workers.

Sign on to this letter to ask the OMB to update their labor standards to better support workers and our communities.

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Shalanda Young
Director
The Office of Management and Budget
725 17th St NW
Washington, D.C. 20503
 
Dear Director Young,
 
We write to you today regarding the recent report from the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. This report represents an important opportunity to strengthen unions and lift up workers in every part of the country, and we are committed to working with the Biden administration to implement the recommendations included in the report.
 
One provision in particular encourages the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to consider updating the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (Uniform Guidance), which dictates how states and localities like the ones we represent can spend federal money.

We the undersigned elected officials call on the OMB to update their Uniform Guidance to include the following provisions:
1. Allow states and localities to consider job, wage, and worker empowerment impacts when contracting with federal funds.
2. Ensure states and localities have the freedom to apply worker-empowering, high-road conditions, including local hire and project labor agreement (PLA) obligations, on their subgrantees.
3. Ensure federal financial assistance programs cannot be used to deny workers the right to organize.
4. Allow implementation of the US Jobs Plan to incentivize and reward companies that commit to creating more and better US jobs and racial equity in hiring.
5. Address worker misclassification and ensure that cities and states using federal funds fully enforce the federal definition of employee in all contracts with private companies.
We strongly support these proposed updates. We want to be able to create fulfilling, safe, high-road jobs across America, and make them accessible to communities that have not traditionally had access to jobs on projects funded through federal awards - especially for people of color, women, returning citizens, veterans, and other workers facing barriers to employment.
 
As states and cities begin receiving federal funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), we also ask that OMB issue an interim guidance supporting these changes. This would allow states and cities to broadly implement policies, like local and targeted hire, while OMB proceeds with the formal update of the Uniform Guidance. This interim guidance would also align with Section 25019 of the IIJA, which removes the ban on local hire for highway construction projects.
 
Updating the Uniform Guidance is a crucial step to connect good-paying jobs to the communities that need them the most. Money earned by those workers strengthens local economies by channeling resources back into their communities. Local hire programs can also help communities address historic inequities by creating on-ramps to construction careers for low income workers, who are more likely to be people of color.
 
We look forward to working with the Biden administration to empower state and local recipients of federal funds to take substantial strides in improving job creation, quality, and equity for workers in hundreds of industries across the United States.
 
Sincerely,

The Undersigned