Published
October 01, 2024
There’s an old expression: “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Yet, the Biden-Harris administration seems to have a different view on providing services to senior citizens. In this case, the issue involves he telecom firm Maximus, which has provided contact center operations support for Medicare and Affordable Care Act services since 2013. If the Biden-Harris administration has its way, Maximus—and the 10,000 people it employs—may wind up on the losing end of the administration’s push to force a union on them regardless of what workers want.
The saga began in June 2023, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) asked for public comments on the call center contract involving various topics, including a “labor harmony agreement” (LHA) requirement. That move came less than a year after CMS had renewed Maximus’s contract with a new, nine-year agreement in 2022, perhaps in part because the company’s call line reportedly has a 95 percent satisfaction rate.
In December 2023, CMS issued a statement announcing that it was going to “recompete” its contract for the call centers. In other words, CMS decided to cancel its contract with Maximus apparently because it had not signed the LHA with a union that has been trying to organize Maximus employees, albeit unsuccessfully.
An LHA is effectively a contract between an employer and a labor union under which the employer agrees not weigh in on an organizing drive, which is to say, it won’t present employees with anything that runs counter to the union narrative. In return, the union ostensibly agrees to refrain from strikes, picketing, or other disruptive activities.
The Biden-Harris administration has consistently emphasized its support for labor unions, but it has not stipulated that companies sign LHAs as a condition of maintaining a federal contract, until now at least. Considering Maximus’s contract is valued at about $6.6 billion, having this kind of requirement could be a make-or-break proposition for the company, not to mention the senior citizens who rely on its services
For its part, Maximus launched a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in June of this year, and that agency ruled on that protest recently. On September 16, the GAO responded with an answer that mostly dismissed Maximus’s arguments. However, it did sustain the company’s contention that the CMS request for proposals was flawed by ambiguity over the LHA requirement’s terms, which caused it to recommend that CMS revise the contract solicitation to make the length of the LHA negotiating period clear.
While that may be a win of sorts for Maximus, it may still end up having to sue over the LHA issue. In the meantime, Maximus employees’ jobs, and seniors’ ability to access Medicare, hang in the balance.
About the authors
Sean P. Redmond
Sean P. Redmond is Vice President, Labor Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
