Does the Service Contract Act apply to my contract?
Five questions, about thirty seconds. Free, no account needed.
Question 1 of 5
Is the work under a contract with the U.S. federal government or the District of Columbia?
Includes subcontracts. SCA obligations flow down, so a subcontractor on a covered prime contract is covered too.
Informational only, and not legal advice. Coverage turns on the specific facts of your contract, and the wage determination incorporated into the solicitation governs. When real money rides on the answer, confirm it with the contracting officer or counsel.
What the Service Contract Act is
The McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act sets minimum wages and fringe benefits for service employees working on federal service contracts. The Department of Labor publishes a wage determination for each locality listing, occupation by occupation, the least you may lawfully pay. If a determination is incorporated into your solicitation, those rates are a floor, not a guideline.
Why contractors get caught out
Two ways, mostly. The first is pricing a bid against rates that have since been revised — determinations change through the year, and nobody tells you. The second is assuming a contract is exempt because the work sounds like construction or the workers feel like professionals. Both mistakes surface late, and both are expensive: back wages, penalties, and in serious cases debarment from federal contracting.
What counts as a service employee
Broadly, anyone performing work on a covered contract who is not a genuine executive, administrative, or professional employee under 29 CFR part 541. That exemption is narrower than most people expect and is tested against actual duties and salary, not job titles. Calling someone a manager does not make them exempt.
If you are covered, what next
Find the determination covering your place of performance, look up each occupation in your labor mix, and build your price from the wage plus health & welfare, paid leave, holidays, payroll taxes and your own overhead. That is what the SCA Bid Pricer does — free, from determinations crawled weekly from SAM.gov, so the rates you price against are the current ones.