FAR clause 52.222-17 is one word long. The word is [Reserved], and it has sat there since 5 June 2020. Must you offer jobs to the people already doing the work? As of July 2026, no.

Is there still a right of first refusal on a service contract recompete?

No. Revoked in 2019, deleted from the FAR in 2020, revived by executive order in 2021 but never implemented, revoked again in January 2025. DOL rescinded its regulations effective 22 December 2025.

Most of what is online is out of date. The chain:

• 30 January 2009. EO 13495 required service contractors and subcontractors to offer the predecessor’s employees a right of first refusal.
• 31 October 2019 to 5 June 2020. EO 13897 revoked it (84 FR 59709); DOL rescinded its regulations at 85 FR 5567; FAC 2020-06 then deleted subpart 22.12 and clause 52.222-17 outright.
• 18 November 2021. EO 14055 revived the policy (86 FR 66397); DOL published 29 CFR part 9 on 14 December 2023, at 88 FR 86736.
• The part almost nobody reports. Section 11 applied the order only to solicitations issued after final FAR Council regulations, which the Council never wrote, while “strongly encouraging” agencies to insert it meanwhile. DOL says it is “unaware of any solicitations” that did, an absence of knowledge rather than a census.
• 20 January 2025. EO 14148, at 90 FR 8237, revoked EO 14055 at Sec. 2(qq).
• 22 December 2025. DOL rescinded 29 CFR part 9 without notice and comment (90 FR 59734), calling it ultra vires. The eCFR shows Part 9 [RESERVED] through 16 July 2026.

No regulation forced FAR 52.222-17 back into a solicitation. A live duty can still sit in one issued between November 2021 and January 2025 by an agency that took up the invitation. Check yours.

What survived the revocations, and what did not?

Five things bind a recompete winner in July 2026: a pay floor reaching only non-exempt service employees, a transition clause that burdens the loser, an evaluation provision scoring your compensation, clearance reciprocity, and, if you hire most of a union-represented unit, a duty to bargain. None is a duty to hire.

The union row is what the nondisplacement story buries. NLRB v. Burns International Security Services was itself a recompete: Burns replaced Wackenhut on plant-protection work, filled 42 guard posts with 27 of Wackenhut’s people, and refused to deal with their certified union. The Court held in 1972 that where the unit is unchanged and a majority of those hired came represented, NLRA 8(a)(5) and 9(a) require the new employer to bargain. You are not bound by the predecessor’s contract, but you are bound to recognize the union and bargain before changing its members’ terms. Where you made it “perfectly clear” during capture that you would keep everyone, the Court said consult the bargaining agent before fixing initial terms.

The bottom row is where readers get lost, because the current FAR’s only “right of first refusal” is clause 52.207-3, and it covers Government personnel on in-house-to-contract conversions: the list is due in 10 days, stretchable to 90 under FAR 7.305(c), and you report within 120 days whom you hired.

What can you actually pay the people you inherit?

Never less than the wage determination in your own contract, and never less than the predecessor’s collective bargaining agreement where one covered the work. Neither floor reaches exempt professionals, and both have narrow exits.

Both floors run to a “service employee”, and 41 U.S.C. 6701(3)(C) excludes anyone “employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity” as 29 CFR part 541 defines it: engineers, analysts, program managers, most senior systems administrators. For them no statutory pay floor exists. For everyone else, 41 U.S.C. 6703 requires your contract to specify wages and fringes at locality prevailing rates, “or, where a collective-bargaining agreement covers the service employees, the rates provided for in the agreement”. A non-union staff still has a floor: the SCA wage determination in your contract.

The successorship rule is what people mistake for a hiring duty. 29 CFR 4.163(a) says the successor’s “sole obligation” is that service employees are paid no less than under the predecessor’s CBA, and that it “does not extend to other items such as seniority, grievance procedures, work rules, overtime, etc.” That limits the Service Contract Act and nothing else. It does not license unilateral restructuring of a represented workforce, and it does not zero out inherited service: under 29 CFR 4.173(a)(1) a vacation benefit written “after one year of service with a contractor or successor” counts continuous time with predecessor contractors at the same federal facility. Price inherited badges at a zero-year baseline and you underpay the fringe.

The floor is self-executing under 29 CFR 4.163(b): it binds whether or not a wage determination based on the predecessor’s CBA reached your contract, and 4.163(e) makes a contractor its own successor on a recompetition of its own work. That same paragraph grants a variation: under 29 CFR 4.1b(b) a CBA signed late in the incumbent’s performance does not bind the successor if the agency learned of it inside the stated windows and the officer gave 30 days’ notice of the procurement dates. And 41 U.S.C. 6707(c)(2) lets the Secretary of Labor find after a hearing that the predecessor’s wages are “substantially at variance” with local prevailing rates, switching that floor off. Put both to the agency labor advisor before you price.

Seeing the CBA beforehand is less certain than it looks. FAR 52.222-41(m) makes the incumbent prime report every CBA to the contracting officer, but FAR 22.1008-2(d)(2) says only that the officer may attach a copy to the successor’s wage determination, and (d)(3) offers the e98 route instead, with no CBA attached. FAR 52.222-46, a 1993 provision current at FAC 2026-01, pushes the other way: on contracts over $900,000 per FAR 22.1103, lowered compensation for essentially the same professional work “may indicate lack of sound management judgment” and may justify rejecting a proposal. For exempt professionals that is the only lever, and your wrap rate caps what sits above it.

Can you make the outgoing contractor hand over its people?

Sometimes. Where the contracting officer inserted FAR 52.237-3, Continuity of Services, the outgoing contractor must disclose personnel records, allow on-site interviews, release employees who agree to move, and negotiate the transfer of their earned fringe benefits.

FAR 52.237-3 puts the duties on the losing contractor: keep as many personnel as practicable on the job and, where selected employees are agreeable, release them and “negotiate transfer of their earned fringe benefits to the successor”. The duty is to negotiate the transfer, not to achieve it, and it is owed to the Government rather than the employee. Do not book inherited leave balances at zero, or promise a candidate that accrued benefits travel.

None of it is automatic: FAR 37.110(c) leaves the clause to the officer’s discretion, so confirm it is in the outgoing contract before scheduling interviews. If it is absent, a government-supplied route to the names still exists. FAR 52.222-41(n), a mandatory clause already in the predecessor’s SCA-covered contract, makes the incumbent give the officer a certified list of every service employee on its payroll in the final month, with anniversary dates, and makes the officer hand it to the successor at commencement. It is narrow: a federal facility, a wage determination carrying length-of-service benefits, SCA service employees only, arriving at phase-in rather than pre-bid. It is still the roster, and the dates are what the vacation math needs. Beyond it, see our piece on how to re-badge 60 cleared people in 30 days.

Why is retaining the inherited staff cheaper than replacing them?

Because a re-badged person keeps an existing eligibility determination under 32 CFR 117.10(h), while someone you have to clear enters a queue that ran 109 days end to end for moderate-risk vetting in FY2025 Q4, and 220 for high-risk.

Under 32 CFR 117.10(h), a current determination backed by an investigation of adequate scope is used without further investigation unless the security agency learns of significant unadjudicated derogatory information. The employee’s side is in our explainer on moving a clearance to a new contractor.

The Trusted Workforce 2.0 quarterly progress report puts FY2025 Q4 government-wide end-to-end vetting at 109 days for the Moderate Risk tier, on 105,438 cases, against a 40-day target, and 220 days for High Risk, on 33,989 cases, against 75. These are risk tiers, not clearance levels: they cover the whole vetted population, public trust roles included, so “109 days for a Secret clearance” is not what the data says.

Treat both as the best published numbers, not audited ones. GAO reported on 11 December 2025, in GAO-26-107100, that 86% of the timeliness statistics it analyzed were inaccurate, a third by 20% or more. It traced 30 of the 36 to one DCSA sampling error, and that error is what GAO ties to the systematic understatement. DCSA fixed the method from FY2025 Q1, but the fix was to a different statistic in a different chain, and the PAC collects its end-to-end figures manually, a quarter behind.

Two columns of the PAC report cut against the retention case. Preliminary determinations let someone start while the investigation runs: across thirteen agencies the PAC counted more than 144,000 favorable ones during the year, saving an estimated 132 days per case. DCSA’s inventory also fell to near 117,000 cases at the end of 2025, a 56% decline since January 2025. A plan budgeting 220 idle days per unbadged hire uses a number the government no longer always pays.

Two constraints follow. 32 CFR 117.10(a)(5) forbids stockpiling cleared employees, and (a)(7) forbids sponsoring anyone who is not your employee or consultant, consultants expressly included. And 117.10(j)(2) bars access for anyone whose break in employment cost them their eligibility until the CSA makes a new determination, the risk our piece on the 24-month reactivation clock covers.

What is the case against the current arrangement?

DOL’s own rescission analysis concedes the case against. In the December 2025 rule the Department wrote that an obligation to offer jobs to predecessor workers “might make their existing employees redundant” where a successor had planned to assign its own people, so keeping a predecessor worker could be offset by one of the successor’s own being laid off. The counterweight is continuity: a carried-over workforce knows the customer, the systems and the SCIF. One number you will not find here is a capture rate, because no primary federal source publishes one.

A word on channels, since we run a cleared job board and have an obvious interest. A board is the wrong tool for capturing a known incumbent roster: those are named people in a facility you can visit, and what reaches them is an interview and an offer letter. It earns its place backfilling the ones who decline, as we set out in where to post cleared jobs, and the five-year cap at 41 U.S.C. 6707(d) is why DoD award announcements are pipeline work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to offer jobs to the incumbent contractor’s employees when I win a recompete?

No federal requirement exists as of July 2026: 52.222-17 and Subpart 22.12 have been [Reserved] since 5 June 2020, EO 14055 was revoked on 20 January 2025, and DOL rescinded 29 CFR part 9 effective 22 December 2025. Check a solicitation issued between those dates, though: the order encouraged agencies to insert the clause voluntarily.

Can I cut the inherited staff’s pay now that nondisplacement is gone?

Not below the applicable floor, and there is usually one even with no union in sight. 41 U.S.C. 6703 requires your contract to carry wages and fringes at locality prevailing rates, or CBA rates where an agreement covers the service employees. Neither floor reaches employees exempt as executive, administrative or professional under 41 U.S.C. 6701(3)(C). The exits are narrow: a “substantially at variance” finding after a hearing, or 29 CFR 4.1b(b).

Does the incumbent’s union come with the workforce?

Not the contract, but the bargaining relationship can. Under NLRB v. Burns, 406 U.S. 272 (1972), a successor that hires a majority of an unchanged bargaining unit must recognize and bargain with the incumbent union under NLRA 8(a)(5) and 9(a), while remaining free of the predecessor’s substantive terms. Restructuring labor categories or shift patterns for a represented unit is a bargaining subject, and where it is “perfectly clear” you plan to retain everyone, consult the agent before fixing initial terms.

Will the inherited employees keep their clearances when they move to my company?

Their eligibility determinations travel with them under 32 CFR 117.10(h), provided the prior investigation meets the required scope and no significant unadjudicated derogatory information surfaces. The risk is a gap: under 117.10(j)(2), a break in employment that costs someone their eligibility means no access until the CSA issues a new determination.

What to do before your next proposal

The regulatory answer is settled for now and unstable over time. Re-verify FAR 52.222-17, 22.1008-2 and the 22.1103 threshold in proposal week.

The operational answer mostly does not turn on that. You have no statutory right to the incumbent workforce, and no individual there has a claim on your jobs, though a union may have a claim on how you set their terms. Confirm whether FAR 52.237-3 is in the outgoing contract; if not, ask for the 52.222-41(n) list.

None of this is a compliance opinion. Union status, CBA timing, what your wage determination contains and which clauses the officer inserted are facts an article cannot see, and FAR 22.1008-2 routes collective bargaining questions to the agency labor advisor. Put yours to that advisor and to counsel before the bid.