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By Debbie Gregory.

While Congress has agreed to back-pay some 800,000 federal workers the salaries they missed during the government’s 35-day shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal contractors, many of who are veterans with veteran-owned businesses, may not.

Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Tina Smith, (D-MN) wanted to attach a bill to the proposed spending package that would provide back pay for these federal contractors. The legislation, which would have been the first law of its kind to grant contractors back pay after a government shutdown, had been tied up in spending negotiations and faced Republican pushback.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said, “I’ve been told the president won’t sign that … I guess federal contractors are different in his view than federal employees.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) reacted to Blunt’s comments with alarm. “It would be cruel and unnecessary to block back pay for federal contract workers who lost more than a month of wages and are still behind on bills due to President Trump’s shutdown,” Van Hollen said. “Many of them work low-wage jobs and live paycheck-to-paycheck.”

Sen. John Thune(R-SD) told reporters on Capitol Hill that there’s still hope that lawmakers can find a way to “make sure federal contractors are taken care of.”

There isn’t a precedent for providing back pay for federal contractors after a shutdown, unlike those that have been established for compensating furloughed federal employees. So sorting out how many contract workers were affected by the shutdown and how much it would cost to compensate them could be a logistical nightmare.

“I just don’t think it’s ever been done before and figuring out duration of contracts – I mean, it sounds like it’s the timing issues. Hopefully, they’ll get it resolved,” Thune said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was less optimistic, and much less sympathetic. “Ms. Pelosi and Sen. Schumer should have thought about this and other collateral damage when they initially refused to negotiate on border security, something they are apparently now willing to do,” said Cornyn.

Unfortunately, many of those who served our country and then came home and started their own businesses may end up paying a very steep price.

Veteran and Military Business Owners Association, VAMBOA,

 

 

 

By Debbie Gregory.

By Debbie Gregory.

Today we will review how two tech companies, who rely heavily on government contracts to provide income and to keep their workforce busy, were able to adjust, and ride out the recent shutdown. Additionally, we will learn how they applied innovative thinking to not only retain their team but to positively ride out the government shutdown.

Evans Incorporated was founded by Sue Evans in 1994; with a single contract. Ford hired Evans Inc. to help them to reimagine and automate a paper-intensive, OSHA-mandated processes.  To help them to successfully transition away from that manual paper-based system to a much more streamlined computer-driven web-based work process. Thus Evans Incorporated was formed.

They have grown quite a bit since those early days; currently approximately 90 percent of Evans Inc.’s revenue comes from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). And recently, nearly all of the company’s contracts with the FAA were under a stop-work order during the government shutdown. Instead of furloughing valuable employees, Evans Incorporated kept working; internally reassigning their team to focus on and update the company’s strategic plan. To also identify and implement improvement goals for the year.  Employees focused on internal research and development efforts, resulting in several innovations.

“We’re committed to them, they’re committed to us,” said Bob Etris, a partner at Evans Incorporated. “We were fortunate. Airplanes still need to fly, the government will eventually reopen, so let’s continue to do good stuff in the meantime.”

HumanTouch, a McLean, VA IT consulting firm was founded in 1998 and specializes in cybersecurity, cloud and IT modernization.

HumanTouch found a unique way to ensure its employees and team remained whole through the shutdown. Because the company could not afford to lose their talent pool, the management team decided to take a very unique approach: they sacrificed a portion of their salaries to retain employees working on contracts that had been stopped.  CEO Moe Jafari forwent his salary altogether.  These actions directly resulted in salaries being covered and health insurance premiums being paid for their team.

Should the threat of another shutdown in mid-February come to pass, similar government contractors could potentially survive it a little easier by paying attention to the actions of these two companies highlighted above on how to weather the political storm.

Veteran and Military Business Owners Association, VAMBOA,

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