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Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

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Jason Bakke
Proposal Manager
Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
Washington DC
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0

Replies

  1. Hello Jason 

    That’s an interesting law! Do any other states / municipalities have similar laws on the books, do you know?

    I see your point on pricing intel, and that’s an interesting by product of the proposed law. But straight asking employees is usually my last ditch effort anyway, since they aren’t always exactly honest. I usually try to get my weasely little paws on a rate sheet and then work backwards from that, or I finagle that information out of contractor side PMs. I tend to find that approach yields more accurate, complete results than querying employees.  

    In general I am a fan of the law as it may well make a dent in pay disparities. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-11-2017 11:26
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

    The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————

    0
  2. Spence, for some of our newer suppliers that are looking to break into the public sector market, do you have any advice for how you might obtain one of those rate sheets?

    And for anyone who is interested in winning work off the GSA schedule, their Contract Awarded Labor Category (or CALC) tool is pretty handy. You can see actual awarded labor rates (not the heavily discounted quote rate on the schedule lists) and use that for your pricing research.

    CALC / Home

    Gsa remove preview
    CALC / Home
    View this on Gsa >

     

    ——————————
    Frank McNally
    Director, Learning & Content Development
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-12-2017 10:16
    From: Spence Witten
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Hello Jason 

    That’s an interesting law! Do any other states / municipalities have similar laws on the books, do you know?

    I see your point on pricing intel, and that’s an interesting by product of the proposed law. But straight asking employees is usually my last ditch effort anyway, since they aren’t always exactly honest. I usually try to get my weasely little paws on a rate sheet and then work backwards from that, or I finagle that information out of contractor side PMs. I tend to find that approach yields more accurate, complete results than querying employees.  

    In general I am a fan of the law as it may well make a dent in pay disparities. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-11-2017 11:26
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

    The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————

    0
  3. An interesting side note on the issue of “badge-flipping,” an incumbent recently tried to make the case to the Court of Federal Claims that losing its employees to the next awardee would “cause irreparable harm” to the company. The Court wasn’t having it.

    ——————————
    Jonathan Messinger
    Public Spend Forum
    Washington DC
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-18-2017 10:06
    From: Frank McNally
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Spence, for some of our newer suppliers that are looking to break into the public sector market, do you have any advice for how you might obtain one of those rate sheets?

    And for anyone who is interested in winning work off the GSA schedule, their Contract Awarded Labor Category (or CALC) tool is pretty handy. You can see actual awarded labor rates (not the heavily discounted quote rate on the schedule lists) and use that for your pricing research.

    CALC / Home

    Gsa remove preview
    CALC / Home
    View this on Gsa >

     

    ——————————
    Frank McNally
    Director, Learning & Content Development
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-12-2017 10:16
    From: Spence Witten
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Hello Jason 

    That’s an interesting law! Do any other states / municipalities have similar laws on the books, do you know?

    I see your point on pricing intel, and that’s an interesting by product of the proposed law. But straight asking employees is usually my last ditch effort anyway, since they aren’t always exactly honest. I usually try to get my weasely little paws on a rate sheet and then work backwards from that, or I finagle that information out of contractor side PMs. I tend to find that approach yields more accurate, complete results than querying employees.  

    In general I am a fan of the law as it may well make a dent in pay disparities. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-11-2017 11:26
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

    The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————

    0
  4. Woah apparently Frank is trying to get me arrested! 😉 

    So it usually takes a lot of leg work, but you provided a great resource. CALC is an awesome tool. Some other techniques: 

    • If you have a big company partner and can make friends with their pricing folks, they often have loads of data built over years and years of competitive analysis. They’re often remarkably accurate and they’ll share sometimes if you ask pretty please! 
    • We have certain companies we benchmark against. When they win awards we FOIA whatever we can get our hands on. We often can’t get the full rate sheet but usually we can get enough (e.g. LCATs, total award amount, etc.) that we can start reverse engineering. And sometimes companies are sloppy with their FOIA redactions and extra stuff slips out that’ll give you a better sense (e.g. like a discount off schedule figure).  
    • For Schedule bids you can usually ask around the network to get a sense of how aggressive certain companies are at discounting.  
    • For the well-heeled folks there are firms that provide pricing analysis services. Not cheap but when I have used them I have been impressed with their ability to accurately estimate not only rates but also build-ups for competitors. 

    We keep running rate sheets on competitors and collect / update data as we collect new information. But it’s a lot of manual labor. I wish there were an easier way to get this type of information and ‘am curious to see other folks’ techniques. Federal sales is often as much a battle against information asymmetry as it is sales in the traditional sense. So any ideas from the community on how to streamline that effort would be appreciated. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-18-2017 10:06
    From: Frank McNally
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Spence, for some of our newer suppliers that are looking to break into the public sector market, do you have any advice for how you might obtain one of those rate sheets?

    And for anyone who is interested in winning work off the GSA schedule, their Contract Awarded Labor Category (or CALC) tool is pretty handy. You can see actual awarded labor rates (not the heavily discounted quote rate on the schedule lists) and use that for your pricing research.

    CALC / Home

    Gsa remove preview
    CALC / Home
    View this on Gsa >

     

    ——————————
    Frank McNally
    Director, Learning & Content Development
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-12-2017 10:16
    From: Spence Witten
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Hello Jason 

    That’s an interesting law! Do any other states / municipalities have similar laws on the books, do you know?

    I see your point on pricing intel, and that’s an interesting by product of the proposed law. But straight asking employees is usually my last ditch effort anyway, since they aren’t always exactly honest. I usually try to get my weasely little paws on a rate sheet and then work backwards from that, or I finagle that information out of contractor side PMs. I tend to find that approach yields more accurate, complete results than querying employees.  

    In general I am a fan of the law as it may well make a dent in pay disparities. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-11-2017 11:26
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

    The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————

    0
  5. Spence, Massachusetts passed such a law last year; I’m not sure whether it has taken effect. Philadelphia also recently passed a similar law, which Comcast has vowed to challenge in court.

    I’ll say here that the intel gained from talented recruiters can be coupled with open source and other pricing data, which can then inform really sophisticated price-to-win models. I’d be fine with the change if I couldn’t literally see the offices of competitors across the Potomac not subject to the new restrictions.

    Of course, federal contractors are nothing if not adaptable to new regulations, and Spence’s suggestions for pricing resources would be even more valuable under this new law.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-12-2017 10:16
    From: Spence Witten
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Hello Jason 

    That’s an interesting law! Do any other states / municipalities have similar laws on the books, do you know?

    I see your point on pricing intel, and that’s an interesting by product of the proposed law. But straight asking employees is usually my last ditch effort anyway, since they aren’t always exactly honest. I usually try to get my weasely little paws on a rate sheet and then work backwards from that, or I finagle that information out of contractor side PMs. I tend to find that approach yields more accurate, complete results than querying employees.  

    In general I am a fan of the law as it may well make a dent in pay disparities. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-11-2017 11:26
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

    The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————

    0
  6. Yeah man, that’s a great point, about it being a competitive disadvantage. Looks like you’ll need to start holding all your interviews at your favorite bar across the river! 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-23-2017 17:40
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Spence, Massachusetts passed such a law last year; I’m not sure whether it has taken effect. Philadelphia also recently passed a similar law, which Comcast has vowed to challenge in court.

    I’ll say here that the intel gained from talented recruiters can be coupled with open source and other pricing data, which can then inform really sophisticated price-to-win models. I’d be fine with the change if I couldn’t literally see the offices of competitors across the Potomac not subject to the new restrictions.

    Of course, federal contractors are nothing if not adaptable to new regulations, and Spence’s suggestions for pricing resources would be even more valuable under this new law.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-12-2017 10:16
    From: Spence Witten
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    Hello Jason 

    That’s an interesting law! Do any other states / municipalities have similar laws on the books, do you know?

    I see your point on pricing intel, and that’s an interesting by product of the proposed law. But straight asking employees is usually my last ditch effort anyway, since they aren’t always exactly honest. I usually try to get my weasely little paws on a rate sheet and then work backwards from that, or I finagle that information out of contractor side PMs. I tend to find that approach yields more accurate, complete results than querying employees.  

    In general I am a fan of the law as it may well make a dent in pay disparities. 

    ——————————
    Spence Witten
    Director of Federal Sales
    Lunarline
    ——————————
    ——————————————-
    Original Message:
    Sent: 01-11-2017 11:26
    From: Jason Bakke
    Subject: Fair wage bill may hurt D.C.-based federal service contractors

    DC Council Members Brianne Nadeau (D-1), Jack Evans (D-2), Mary Cheh (D-3), Charles Allen (D-6), David Grosso (I-0), Elissa Silverman (I-0), and Robert White (D-0) have introduced a bill to amend DC’s Wage Transparency Act of 2014 to prohibit prospective employers from asking job candidates about their wage history. While I imagine nearly all support the bill’s goal of reducing pay disparities, particularly between men and women, for government contractors who regularly badge-flip employees, the bill could significantly advantage incumbents. Without being allowed to ask for salary information from incumbent workers, competitors will lose an important source of insight into current-contract pricing.

    The bill now heads to Silverman’s Council on Labor and Workforce Development.

    ——————————
    Jason Bakke
    Proposal Manager
    Censeo Consulting Group (Censeo)
    Washington DC
    ——————————

    0
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