Contractors, Contractor Employees caught in USAID Squeeze Play

USAID Contractor Disavows All USAID Connections on Web Site

I just got of the phone with a old colleague's wife who was part of the USAID explosion last week as close to 1,000 contractor employees were summarily dismissed and senior leadership essentially perp walked out of their building without notice.

She was working off-site that day and was allowed in briefly, under escort, to recover personal belongings. They were all cut off from the computers and network services that Elon and DOGE have illegal access to, including classified information*. As such, she lost access to over a decade worth of her work in sustaining public health in developing countries.

See "Senior USAID security officials put on leave after refusing Musk’s DOGE access to agency systems" at https://archive.ph/mHCKI#selection-2247.7-2247.103

Her co-workers have been talking about filing a class-action lawsuit against Credence, the Prime Contractor, over the dismissals, and this is what I explained to her from the Contracting Officer perspective:

1. Because they worked for a sub-contractor, Public Health International (PHI), there is no legal relationship between these employees and the prime contractor. Therefore they have no standing to sue.

2. The Government, as sovereign, has a unilateral right to terminate a contract, either through convenience or default (unless this was a commercial conditions awarded contract and it changes somewhat as to what kind of termination it is). The preference, of course, is always through convenience. In the end there is always a negotiated settlement which could include severance payments/health insurance costs. To that end, PHI could have, in general, kept them kept them on board until an actual termination of the contract occurred. So if the employees have to be mad at someone, it should be with PHI not Credence (although they can still be mad at them both.

3. PHI was in a pickle. They are one of the "Creatures of USAID" that would not exist as a company if not for USAID. They are not like a huge consulting company that can move people to other projects or have them on the bench for a period. If they have no work for them they have no revenue to pay them. It sucks, but it is the reality of working for a Contractor for the government. (We can get into the legality of the contract to begin with in a separate discussion).

4. A "Stop Work Order" is not a termination of a contract, even if Elon wants to brag on all these "DEI Contracts that have been terminated." It is the first step in the termination process. Yes, they will eventually be terminated, the writing is on the wall, but they are not yet terminated and the government WILL have termination costs. and those costs will pile up if they fire the agency's contracting work force.

And here is something no one is talking about in this evisceration of USAID, its employees, and its contractors:

What is going to happen to all of the foreign service employees and contractors working in country on these projects? How are they going to be repatriated? If Contractor's have to stop work and expenditures are frozen, how are theses costs going to be recouped? Is President Elon expecting them to pay their own way to relocate home?

She told me that one of her colleagues was on a 12-13 hour flight to Dubai for work when this went down. When she de-planed she was informed that she had to turn around and return to the United States. She had her two young children with her, and they would not provide them a hotel room. Dehumanizing and degrading are the words that come to mind for someone just trying to do their job.

Another things she mentioned that makes it hard is people outside the beltway really have no idea what is happening up there because they really have no access to or interest in news from "inside the beltway." Unless it personally hits them they do not care. But rest assured they will eventually be impacted as this happens with other agencies. And they will have no one to blame except themselves.

And now for Credence Management Solutions, LLC . Shame on them for immediately scrubbing their web site of ANY relationship with USAID! They may be, in my opinion, doing this for a simple reason despite having glowing performance evaluation record from USAID: fear and intimidation from the Government. They may fear if they leave any USAID contract references on their site, they will be black-balled by the government from any new contracts.

Well guess what Credence: CPARS records do not just disappear. There will always be a record of your work with the Agency.

Before the Purge (Source: Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/)

After the Purge

Just like this USA Spending record that shows you have received 64.07% of your close to half a billion dollars in revenue from from USAID!:

https://www.usaspending.gov/.../421be47b-ffc8-a394.../latest

And of course there is the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/.../credence-to-support-usaids.../

Stay tuned people and pay attention!