My question involves employment and labor law for the state of: Virginia

To begin with, my co-workers and myself are all non-exempt employees of a contract company working on a government contract.

I have 2, and possibly 3 grievances with my employer, and we employees are trying to find out the best way to deal with it. I understand the "whistle-blower" law, but regardless, the last 3 employees who voiced concern up the chain of command were all fired. One was threatened with "we will destroy your security clearance if you report this after you leave".

The first concern is the use of comp-time in place of overtime. The department of labor states that non-exempt employees must be paid overtime and cannot be given comp time.

the second concern is travel time. Our company only pays 8 hours per travel day. Department of labor states that non-exempt employees must be paid from the time they arrive at the departing airport, through the flight/s, until they arrive at the destination hotel or finish business that day. On the return flight, you are paid from when you leave the hotel, until you arrive at the returning airport.

So for a domestic trip, 8 hours usually covers it, but most of our travel is international. On 20-30 hr travel days we only get paid 8-16 hours (depending if it spans 1-2 days).

The last concern, and i am not sure if this is true, but apparently the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act of 1965 states that vacation/leave accrual rates must stay the same when switching companies. Just over 1 year ago, all employees moved from company 1 to (current) company 2. no job positions changed, it was a seamless transition in the office. One day we were company 1, the next we were company 2. Most long term employees of company 1 like myself were getting 7 hours of leave per pay period. When we moved over we were getting 5.

Now im not sure the last is completely accurate, but i know the first two are valid concerns.

What i would like to know is if we actually have a case against the employer, and if so, what can we do to protect ourselves from being fired, as is obviously the retaliation of choice.

thank you for any help