When Contracts No Longer Mean Anything

I’m in a funk.  That’s an announcement, maybe a warning.  It’s NOT an apology.

Integrity in my profession has always been a huge deal to me. My word meant something to me, and to others.   As a Contracting Officer, I signed on behalf of my country, and that carried with it a lot of responsibility.  I didn’t sign and blithely renege.  If we had to break a contract for some rare reason, then we negotiated some kind of equitable adjustment in accordance with the contract. My word—my country’s word—was good when it came to contracts as well as other agreements, like personnel agreements, union agreements, MOUs and MOAs with other organizations, and with customers.

Keeping my word and my country keeping its word were both at the very core of that world.  Reneging on a contract or agreement just didn’t happen often.

I can count on one hand the times I was TOLD to renege and leave someone without recourse.  Once, an SES told me to tell one of our easiest customers that “we” were changing our deal unilaterally.  I refused.   She wouldn’t face them herself but would send me to tell them we weren’t going to honor our written agreement – that she was going to take their millions for another purpose and give them a fraction of what we’d agreed to.  I was told I’d lose my job if I refused to breach the contract, that refusing was insubordinate.  I mentioned something about fiscal law and that I’d probably lose my house if she fired me, but the answer was still no. Then I promptly gave up a promised promotion and left for a less prestigious office within a couple of months.  I just felt slimy in her presence after that.

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen contracts and agreements ended unilaterally, with no equitable adjustments, no recourse, no nothing.  I’ve seen people with telework agreements (that stipulated how selling their homes and moving states away, if necessary, would be compensated) suddenly have those agreements nullified with a demand to be onsite within days.  These were highly sought-after people who accepted those jobs based on that agreement, and they upheld their end of the agreement.  What good were those agreements if one party can ignore it?  The same with contracts suddenly being cut without a proper downscope or termination negotiation.  The same with contracts with rates being illegally capped in an arbitrary manner that basically kills the ability to continue the research.  The same with the farmers back home who are seeing their agreements ended after they’ve upheld their end and now are in danger of losing their farms and homes.   I could go on and on about situations in my closest circle.

I look at Government organizations that are not under a hiring freeze and are trying to bring in new hires, and I wonder how they can persuade a top-notch employee to move across the country for a job that might be gone before the employee can hang curtains and turn on utilities.  I look at contractors out there now who are wary of whether they should sign the contract they just negotiated and whether they’ll ever see the promised payment for the delivery of something they’ll spend money to produce. 

Trust is broken. The social contract has been destroyed.

So like I said, I’m in a funk.  A personal crisis, if you will. And that makes me so sad to have to ask myself this question now, considering I’ve built my life and my life’s work on the framework of being as good as MY word and as good as OUR word:  

What good is my country’s word?