Stanley Inc.

Last edited by Phil Mattera on May 2, 2008 - 12:15pm

Company Snapshot:

Stanley Inc. (also known by the name of its subsidiary Stanley Associates) is a rising star among providers of information technology and business process outsourcing services to the U.S. federal government, particularly the Department of Defense, from which it gets about two-thirds of its revenues. The rest comes from civilian agencies ranging from the Department of Justice to the Library of Congress. At the end of its last fiscal year, the company had a contract backlog worth about $975 million.

It was the company’s contract with the State Department to process passports that got it in the news in March 2008. Stanley turned out to be the employer—the identity of which was initially withheld—of two contract workers who took unauthorized looks at the passport files of presidential candidates. Several months earlier, Stanley had gained some notoriety for its strong resistance to a union organizing drive among workers at two facilities in Vermont and California it operates for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Ownership status:

Publicly traded

Number of employees worldwide:

3,500

Chief executive officer:

Phil Nolan

Website:

http://www.stanleyassociates.com

Corporate accountability

Accountability overview:

Stanley became the center of national controversy in March 2008, when it was revealed that two of its employees were involved in unauthorized viewing of the passport records of presidential candidates while doing contract work for the U.S. State Department. The company, which had just received a new $570 million from State before the scandal exploded, expressed regret and said it was cooperating with government investigators.

In 1997 Stanley agreed to pay $250,000 to settle charges that it had violated the False Claims Act in its billing practices concerning a contract with the Department of Transportation.

Labor:

In late 2007 Stanley was awarded a contract from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services—a branch of the Department of Homeland Security—to take over management of two facilities where citizenship applications are processed. The company soon announced that it would change job classifications at the two centers—one in St. Albans, Vermont and another in Laguna Niguel, California—in a way that would result in a pay reduction of about 12 percent for up to half the workforce.

Outraged, the workers launched a union organizing drive with the help of the United Electrical workers union (UE), a rank-and-file-oriented union not affiliated with the AFL-CIO or Change to Win. The National Labor Relations Board scheduled nine different elections at the facilities because many of the workers are employed by subcontractors. The union charged that in the period leading up to the elections, Stanley engaged in “one of the most intense and brutal anti-union campaigns UE has faced.” This was said to include a variety of union-busting tactics—from hiring the union-avoidance law firm Seyfarth Shaw to forcing workers to watch propaganda videos. A union official told the Dirt Diggers Digest that workers were held in captive-audience meetings for up to one-quarter of their shifts in the period leading up to the elections—this at a time when the backlog of citizenship applications remains a serious problem. Subcontractors were pressured to adopt the same tactics of intimidation, UE charged. Despite these conditions, UE won six of the nine elections held at various times in early 2008. The union now represents about 714 of the 950 workers at the two facilities.

History

Stanley’s website notes the company’s modest origins: “ Stanley was founded as a small consulting firm in 1966 by Rear Admiral Emory D. Stanley. For the next 20 years, the company continued as a two-man consulting business focused on maritime studies.” The company moved into information technology and rode the rising wave of federal government spending in that area over the past two decades.

In 1996 the company introduced an Employee Stock Ownership Plan that the website describes as “an exit strategy for the departing founders and [a way] to further enhance its employee-focused culture.” In 2006 the company went public. Over the past decade, Stanley has enjoyed a red-hot rate of growth, thanks both to new contracts and to acquisitions. Among its purchases have been smaller contractors such as CCI Inc., Fuentez Systems Concepts, Morgan Research and Techrizon LLC.

Financial information

Stock ticker symbol:

SXE

Total revenue:

$409.4 million

Fiscal year:

2007

Net Income:

$10.7 million

Fiscal year:

2007

Major lines of business/segments:

From the company's 10-K: “We provide information technology services and solutions to U.S. defense and federal civilian government agencies. We offer our customers solutions and expertise to support their mission-essential needs at any stage of program, product development or business lifecycle through five service areas: systems engineering, enterprise integration, operational logistics, business process outsourcing and advanced engineering and technology. As a systems integrator, we apply these five service areas to enable our customers to achieve interoperability between different business processes and information technology systems.”

Here is a list of customers the company posts on its website.

Additional descriptive data

Link to full list of subsidiaries:

Subsidiaries

Specialized Information

Links to federal contract rankings in U.S.:

No.50 on Washington Technology list of 100 largest federal prime contractors