In the two months since the State of the Union address, the President is making good on his promise to use his executive powers to help workers – by boosting the pay of low-wage contractors, expanding overtime protections, and ensuring equal pay – but more action is needed to make sure contractors comply with the new rules.

“It is great progress … but the important thing is how the executive orders will be enforced,” Tibebe Ayele, a federal food court worker who makes $5.83 an hour, told The Washington Post.

In the past few months, Tibebe and other low-wage federal contract workers at Union Station and Ronald Reagan Building filed formal wage theft complaints with the US Labor Department to reclaim $4 million in back pay and damages because current minimum wage and overtime laws are routinely flouted on federal property.

That’s why “the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez urging the Labor Department to step up its enforcement actions against wage theft,” reported The Washington Post.

“If federal contractors failed to comply with wage and hour laws when the minimum wage was $7.25, they may be more likely to ignore the new minimum wage of $10.10 as well as the new overtime regulations,” wrote US Reps. Keith Ellison, Raul Griljalva and Eleanor Holmes-Norton.

“Strong enforcement of wage theft violations and consideration of those violations in future contract award decisions would send a clear signal to contractors that the federal government will not do business with law-breakers,” the lawmakers stated.

The New York Times editorial board also urged the US Labor Department to aggressively use its enforcement powers to police federal contractors, noting that “swift investigations and, if warranted, serious consequences, including back pay, damages and penalties, would ensure justice and future compliance.”

Research shows that wage theft is rampant among taxpayer supported companies. A National Employment Law Project survey revealed that nearly 40% of federal contract workers reported wage theft, and a U.S. Senate report found that 32% of the largest fines for labor law violations were assessed against federal contractors.

The Congressional letter to the Labor Secretary calling for a crack-down on contractors that steal from workers comes on the heels of a series of lawsuits filed by McDonald’s workers alleging widespread wage and hour violations in the fast food industry.

As Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America, pointed out in her column published by The Hill: “The President now has another important opportunity as CEO of the federal government clean up illegal operations under his oversight and send a message to the CEOs of profitable corporations like McDonald’s that they can no longer get away with illegal and abusive practices like wage theft.”