Worst corporate handout ever: How the government funds abusive tycoons

Worst corporate handout ever: How the government funds abusive tycoons

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“Many of the most flagrant violators of workplace safety and wage laws are also recipients of large federal contracts,” states the HELP report, “Acting Responsibly? Federal Contractors Frequently Put Workers’ Lives and Livelihoods at Risk.”

The authors contend that an existing database created under the the Clean Contracting Act of 2008 fails to capture “many incidents of misconduct,” citing examples including the deaths of a worker “swept into an industrial dryer” at Cintas Corp., two workers killed in an explosion at a ship company owned by ST Engineering Limited, and seven workers in the Anacortes, Wash., refinery of the Fortune 100 petroleum company Tesoro. The HELP report states that Tesoro “received $463 million in federal contracts in fiscal year 2012,” and that the $2.4 million initial penalty safety assessed against it ranks — along with initial penalties assessed against 17 other contractors — among the largest assessed between 2007 and 2012. A 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office found that 15 contractors with citations for federal labor law violations had collectively received $6 billion in government contracts in fiscal 2009.