U.S. | Disabled | Federal contractors | Target on the Drawing Table

Employers and business groups are trying to stop an Obama administration effort that calls for federal contractors to hire a minimum number of disabled workers and could penalize those who don’t by revoking their contracts.

The proposal could reshape hiring at roughly 200,000 companies that generate $700 billion a year in contracts with the federal government. They include defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., aircraft maker Boeing Co. and firms across the health-care, construction and information-technology industries.

Under the Labor Department plan, most firms that contract or subcontract with the federal government would be asked to have disabled people make up 7% of their work force. While the department says it wouldn’t be an explicit requirement, companies that don’t hit the target could have their contracts canceled or could be barred from winning future contracts until they show they are trying to meet the target…

via U.S. Pushes Target for Hiring the – WSJ.com.

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New from Washington: Disabled-employee quotas for federal contractors | The Daily Caller

One of the Obama administration’s most ambitious and far-reaching regulatory initiatives has thus far received very little notice in the press. In December the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) proposed expanding the government’s affirmative action program for federal contractors (a category that includes most of the nation’s biggest companies) to include various new obligations regarding disabled employees. The most notable of these is a new quota (they deny that it is such, of course, and call it merely a “required … hiring goal”) under which disabled employees are to make up at least 7 percent of a contractor’s workforce. A public comments period expired February 21…

via New from Washington: Disabled-employee quotas for federal contractors | The Daily Caller.