“Hiring veterans and disabled workers might be good politics, but it’s expensive policy, according to a construction contractors’ trade group and other pro-business outfits.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is mulling a new equal-opportunity employment rule that would require all contractors — construction companies as well as IT firms to airplane manufacturers — doing business with the government “to set a hiring goal of having 7 percent of their employees be qualified workers with disabilities.”
Another amendment to federal contracting policy would require government contractors and subcontractors to make a “fair and reasonable” effort to hire veterans and meticulously document efforts to recruit and hire former military personnel.
While the new rules would set “goals” — not quotas — by the federal government’s own description, the Associated General Contractors of America says that meeting those goals would be hugely expensive, at least for construction companies, and far more expensive than the government’s cost-of-compliance estimates issued to date.”