Private sector companies receive billions of dollars annually in federal government contracts for goods and services. Data from GSA show that federal contracts valued at $25,000 or more totaled almost $176 billion in fiscal year 1994. Approximately 22 percent of the labor force, 26 million workers, is employed by companies with federal contracts and subcontracts, according to fiscal year 1993 estimates of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Federal law and an executive order place greater responsibilities on federal contractors compared with other employers in some areas of workplace activity. For example, federal contractors must comply with Executive Order 11246, which requires a contractor to develop an affirmative action program detailing the steps that the contractor will take and has already taken to ensure equal employment opportunity for all workers, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In addition, the Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act require the payment of area-prevailing wages and benefits on federal contracts in the service and construction industries, respectively. Recently, the administration issued an executive order that would bar federal contractors from receiving contracts if they hire permanent replacements for striking workers and another executive order that would bar contractors for hiring illegal immigrants. Additionally, under the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, Labor may debar contractors in the construction industry for “repeated willful or grossly negligent” violations of safety and health standards issued under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Under federal procurement regulations, agencies may deny an award of a contract or debar or suspend a contractor for a variety of reasons, including failure to comply with safety and health standards. Before awarding a contract, an agency must make a positive finding that the bidder is responsible as defined in federal procurement regulations. Also, federal agencies can debar or suspend companies for any “cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects the present responsibility of a Government contractor or subcontractor.” Debarred companies are not allowed to receive federal contracts (or other forms of federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans) for a period of time, generally not to exceed 3 years. Suspended companies are temporarily disqualified from receiving federal contracts or other forms of federal financial assistance. In determining whether a federal contractor is responsible, agency awarding and debarring officials could consider compliance with safety and health standards. To help foster consistency among agency regulations concerning debarment and suspension, Executive Order 12549, issued in February 1986, established the Interagency Committee on Debarment and Suspension, which consists of agency representatives designated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This committee meets monthly and provides the opportunity for agency representatives (primarily debarring officials) to share information about companies that they are either trying to debar or suspend or to bring into compliance with various laws and regulations in order to avoid having to take an adverse contracting action. At its monthly meetings, the committee also helps interpret regulations on debarment or suspension issued by OMB. When more than one agency has an interest in a particular federal contractor, the Interagency Committee coordinates the assignment of lead agency responsibility for any actions taken against that contractor. GSA maintains the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) that tracks firms awarded contracts of $25,000 or more in federal funding for products and services. For fiscal year 1994, FPDS tracked information on 179,977 contracts totaling almost $176 billion. Although it is difficult to estimate the number of federal contractors, GSA reports there may be 60,000 federal contractors in that there are as many unique corporate identification codes in FPDS. FPDS contains a variety of information, including the contractor’s name and location, agency the contract is with, principal place of contract performance, and contract dollar amounts awarded. FPDS does not contain information on contractors’ safety and health practices. Most private sector firms—regardless of whether they are federal contractors—must comply with safety and health standards issued under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The act was meant “to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women.” The Secretary of Labor established OSHA in 1970 to carry out a number of responsibilities under the act, including developing and enforcing safety and health standards, educating workers and employers about workplace hazards, and establishing responsibilities and rights for both employers and employees for the achievement of better safety and health conditions.Even though OSHA has been in existence for 25 years, work-related illness and injury remain a substantial problem. A total of 6,588 workplace fatalities—on average, 18 fatalities a day—were reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1994, a 4-percent increase over 1993. In addition, a total of 6.8 million injuries and illnesses were reported in 1994. OSHA cites employers for violations of standards covering a variety of threats to workplace safety and health. Safety standards include those designed to protect against workers falling from stairs or scaffolds (walking-working surfaces); from injuries due to inadequate machine guarding (machine guarding); and from electrical hazards (electrical). Some standards (for example, excavations, underground construction, and steel erection) protect against construction-related injuries. Health standards protect against exposure to toxic substances such as lead, asbestos, and bloodborne pathogens (referring to occupational exposures to blood). There are also more generic informational standards relating to the recording and reporting of occupational injuries and illnesses and for informing employees about chemical hazards in the workplace. OSHA may also cite employers for hazards not covered by any standard under Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, referred to as the General Duty Clause. This clause requires that employers furnish employees a place of work “free from recognized hazards.” OSHA has relied on the General Duty Clause, for example, to regulate employee exposure to tuberculosis in the health care industry. OSHA has also relied on the General Duty Clause to penalize companies for ergonomic hazards such as cumulative trauma disorders, including lower back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and tendinitis. OSHA characterizes violations as other-than-serious, serious, willful, or repeat, with civil penalties in specified increasing amounts for these various types of violations. In addition, OSHA designates violations as unclassified when companies make significant concessions to OSHA, perhaps to avoid losing coverage under state workers’ compensation programs or to minimize adverse publicity attached to violations as originally classified. Additional penalties can be assessed either when a company fails to abate a hazard or under OSHA’s “egregious” policy. Failure to abate or correct a prior violation may bring an additional civil penalty for each day that the violation continues beyond the prescribed abatement date. Under OSHA’s “egregious” policy, an employer is cited for each instance of a particular violation—or for each worker exposed to a hazard. Since initiated in 1986, this policy has resulted in penalties for some inspections running into the millions of dollars. Although inspections in which a company is cited in this fashion are not common, the number of these inspections doubled from 8 in fiscal year 1994 to 17 in fiscal year 1995. OSHA is authorized to conduct workplace inspections to determine whether employers are complying with safety and health standards, and to issue citations and assess penalties when an employer is not in compliance. The proposed penalty reflects an OSHA compliance officer’s judgment of the nature and severity of violations. However, these proposed penalties are often reduced. OSHA justifies such reductions as a means to get employers to abate workplace problems quickly by avoiding the contesting of citations. If employers contest citations or proposed penalties, they do not have to abate the cited hazard until the case is resolved, thereby leaving workers unprotected. If cited for violations during an inspection, an employer has 15 working days to either (1) accept the citation, abate the hazards, and pay the penalties; (2) have an informal conference with local OSHA officials and negotiate an informal settlement agreement; or (3) formally contest the citation before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). After reviewing a contested citation, OSHRC may affirm, vacate, or modify OSHA’s citations and proposed penalties. Once the inspection is closed (either because the employer accepted the citation or a contested citation was resolved), the penalty is referred to as the actual penalty. OSHA targets a portion of its inspection resources toward facilities that may be more hazardous to employees. OSHA has recently taken steps to revise its inspection targeting priorities, in which employers in a certain industry are currently treated alike regardless of their individual safety and health performance. By integrating worksite-specific information, including excessive rates of workplace injury and illness and a record of serious and repeat violations, into its targeting procedures, OSHA hopes to enhance the effectiveness of its enforcement system. OSHA maintains a database that tracks all OSHA inspections. The Integrated Management Information Systems (IMIS) database includes over 2 million inspections from 1972 to 1995, with 72,950 closed inspections in 1994 alone in which the employer was cited for at least one violation. IMIS includes such information as whether the inspections were performed by OSHA or a state-operated program, penalty amounts (proposed and actual), the type of violation (for example, serious, willful, or repeat), the standards violated, whether fatalities or injuries occurred, and abatement information. In addition, IMIS includes some data on the worksite inspected, including the type of industry it is engaged in and the number of workers employed. This database does not contain information about whether violators receive federal contracts. Federal contracts have been awarded to employers who have violated occupational safety and health regulations.