RECONSIDERATION GRANTED; DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION:
August 3, 2016
CBCA 5084-R
SECTEK, INC., 
Appellant,
v.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION,
Respondent.
Daniel B. Abrahams and Aidan J. Delgado of Brown Rudnick LLP, Washington, DC,
counsel for Appellant.
Jennifer Klein and Stephani Abramson, Office of General Counsel, National Archives
and Records Administration, College Park, MD, counsel for Respondent.
Before Board Judges SHERIDAN, WALTERS, and CHADWICK.
CHADWICK, Board Judge. 
SecTek, Inc. filed a timely motion for relief from our decision denying its appeal,
SecTek, Inc. v. National Archives & Records Administration, CBCA 5084, 16-1 BCA
¶ 36,403.  SecTek argues for the first time, among other things, that we should have
dismissed its appeal for lack of jurisdiction.  See Board Rule 27(a)(5) (48 CFR 6101.27(a)(5)
(2016)).  We agree and accordingly grant reconsideration, rescind our merits decision, and
dismiss the appeal.

CBCA 5084-R                                                                                                                      2
Background
Familiarity with our prior decision is assumed.  In September 2015, SecTek submitted
a certified claim under the contract’s Disputes clause, seeking a price adjustment pursuant
to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) clause 52.222-43(d), Fair Labor Standards Act and
Service Contract Act–Price Adjustment (Multiple Year and Option Contracts) (48 CFR
52.222-43(d) (2014)), for increased labor costs under a collective bargaining agreement
(CBA) that SecTek signed with its unionized employees in June 2015.  In November 2015,
the contracting officer issued a “determination” that the CBA would not be incorporated in
SecTek’s fixed-price contract as a wage determination pursuant to the Service Contract Act,
41 U.S.C. §§ 6701-6707 (2012).  SecTek did not consider this response a decision on its
claim, and it filed this appeal under the Contract Disputes Act (CDA) from a deemed denial. 
See 41 U.S.C. § 7103(f)(5).  Although the contracting officer later issued a decision (or a
revised decision) on SecTek’s claim, neither party questioned our CDA jurisdiction.  The
Board resolved the appeal on cross-motions for summary relief. 
Discussion
SecTek now points out that FAR clause 52.222-41, Service Contract Labor Standards,
which was incorporated in the contract, stated that disputes about labor standards must be
resolved pursuant to Department of Labor (DOL) disputes procedures, “not [under] the
Disputes clause,” 48 CFR 52.222-41(t), and that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
and at least one of our predecessor boards have held that disputes about applicable labor
standards and wage determinations lie within the exclusive jurisdiction of DOL. 
See Emerald Maintenance, Inc. v. United States, 925 F.2d 1425, 1429 (Fed. Cir. 1991)
(“[T]he specific Disputes provision, stating that disputes arising out of labor standards are
not to be subject to the general disputes clause, but are to be resolved in accordance with the
procedures of [DOL], predominates over the general provision that the Board has jurisdiction
to decide any appeal from a contracting officer.”); Kass Management Services, Inc., GSBCA
8819, 88-3 BCA ¶ 20,891, at 105,619 (“Queries by appellant as to the correct wage
determination applicable to its contracts . . . must be addressed to the DoL.”). 
SecTek posits that JL Associates, Inc. v. General Services Administration, GSBCA
11922, 93-3 BCA ¶ 25,939, in which the General Services Board of Contract Appeals
(GSBCA) granted the agency’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, is “remarkably
similar” to this appeal.  We substantially agree.  JL Associates differed slightly from this
appeal, in that the issue there was when the CBA was executed, rather than, as here, what the
CBA’s terms were.  The contracting officer received an unsigned CBA with typographical
errors before the start of the option year and a signed, “corrected” copy during the option
period.  Believing that the CBA did not exist before the option period, he did not incorporate

CBCA 5084-R                                                                                                                      3
it in the contract or forward it to DOL to obtain a wage determination.  See 48 CFR 22.1008-
1(d)(2)-(3) (contracting officer may either “prepare a wage determination referencing” an
incumbent contractor’s CBA, or “request that [DOL] make the . . . wage determination”). 
The contractor submitted a CDA claim for an increase in the option price and appealed from
the denial of its claim.  The GSBCA held that “whether the minimum wage, applicable to the
first option period of this contract, should have been established in accordance with” the
disputed CBA “is not an issue that can be decided by this Board. . . .  Whether or not the
collective bargaining agreement should be the basis of a revised wage determination is a
decision which is solely within the jurisdiction of [DOL].”  93-3 BCA at 129,011.
The respondent, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), opposes
SecTek’s request for reconsideration but does not cite or discuss JL Associates or any other
decision on which SecTek relies.  NARA cites three decisions that shed no light on our
jurisdiction here.  In USProtect Corp. v. Department of Homeland Security, CBCA 65, 08-1
BCA ¶ 33,782, we ruled we had jurisdiction in an appeal from a deemed denial of a claim
for a wage adjustment, but we did not mention the DOL dispute procedures. Cf. Huston
v. United States, 956 F.2d 259, 262 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (noting courts are not bound by prior
exercises of jurisdiction where a jurisdictional issue was not raised).  Further, as the GSBCA
explained in Merit Construction Co. v. General Services Administration, GSBCA 12426,
94-3 BCA ¶ 26,969, in both Burnside-Ott Aviation Training Center, Inc. v. United States,
985 F.2d 1574 (Fed. Cir. 1993), and in Merit, “labor standard issues” that were
acknowledged to be “within the exclusive jurisdiction of the DOL form[ed] the partial factual
predicate of the dispute between the parties.”  94-3 BCA at 134,334 (emphasis added).  In
Burnside-Ott, DOL had ordered the contractor to reclassify certain employees and pay them
higher wages.  The question of the contractor’s entitlement to an equitable adjustment for the
increased costs due to that wage determination was properly before the courts under the
CDA.  Burnside-Ott, 956 F.2d at 1580.  Similarly, in Merit, the GSBCA had jurisdiction to
decide whether the contractor’s obligation to pay certain workers in accordance with a DOL
wage determination amounted to a contract change.  94-3 BCA at 134,333-34.  In both cases,
DOL had issued a final wage determination, and the CDA litigation concerned the effect of
the wage determination on the parties’ contractual rights and obligations. 
Here, by contrast, the merits issue is the same as in JL Associates––whether a
particular CBA “should be the basis of a revised wage determination” applicable to the
option year.  93-3 BCA at 129,011.  We agree with SecTek and our predecessor board that
this issue is not for us to decide.  The DOL regulations in 29 CFR part 7 “set forth the
[exclusive] procedure for appellant to follow if it has any questions concerning the correct
wage determination to be used in its contract.”  JL Associates, 93-3 BCA at 129,012. 

CBCA 5084-R                                                                                                                      4
NARA argues that the question here “is not what the appropriate wage determination
is,” but “whether NARA is required to adjust the task order price” for the option year, which
NARA argues is within our jurisdiction to decide.  We conclude that those two issues are not
so easily separated, and that the contract and regulations leave it to DOL to decide whether
the 2015 CBA should have formed the basis of a wage determination for the contracting
officer to apply when considering a price adjustment under FAR clause 52.222-43(d).
Decision
RECONSIDERATION of our June 22, 2016, decision is GRANTED.  The appeal
is DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION.
________________________________
KYLE CHADWICK
Board Judge
We concur:
___________________________ _______________________________
PATRICIA J. SHERIDAN RICHARD C. WALTERS
Board Judge Board Judge