On Nov. 7, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a guidance letter that will provide ABC contractors working with the Department of Defense the legal clarity necessary to allow active duty soldiers onto their jobsites in order to receive on-the-job training, which previously caused unanswered legal questions. 

The letter, signed by the Wage and Hour Division Administration Cheryl M. Stanton, states that active duty soldiers participating in the SkillBridge program are not subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract Act and the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act. ABC contractors are working with the DOD’s SkillBridge program to help provide skills education to active duty servicemembers who are within six months of leaving the military and faced legal hurdles when attempting to bring them onto federal construction projects to further their skills education. 

ABC worked with Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to make a formal request that DOL definitively say these soldiers would be exempt from these laws in order to bring them onto jobsites.