Recently, the Biden administration resurrected an Obama era executive order rescinded by the Trump administration.
Executive Order 14055 restores the requirement that federal contractors and subcontractors covered by the Service Contract Act make a good faith offer to employ service employees employed by the predecessor contractor. While the new Executive Order only applies to service employees, is a bit broader than the previous one in that it does not exclude managerial or supervisory employees from this requirement.
The Executive Order does, however, contain an exception for predecessor employees whom the new awardee reasonably believes it would have just cause to discharge based on the employee’s past performance and it does not require the new awardee to maintain the same staffing levels as the previous contractor.
The new Executive Order requires the incumbent to provide the Contracting Officer with a certified list of names of all service employees who worked for the incumbent and its subcontractors during the last month of contract performance at least 10 business days before the completion of the contract or its work on the contract, whichever is earlier.
The list must contain anniversary dates of employment by the incumbent and any predecessor contractors on the same project. The contracting officer will then provide this list to the new awardee.
The Department of Labor will be issuing regulations implementing the restored right of first refusal requirement. There is every reason to expect the new regulations will be substantially the same as the previous regulations implementing EO 13495, the similar Obama era Executive Order.