Four days a week, at 4:45 in the morning, Jessenia Vega pulls her hair back into a tight bun, leaves the small room she rents in an apartment in Hyattsville, Md., and catches a bus. The bus connects to a Metro line that leaves at 5:08. A little before 5:45, she eventually arrives at the Pentagon, goes through security, puts on her uniform, and starts ringing up Egg McMuffins and hash browns at the Defense Department's in-house McDonald's.

Vega, 31, has asked her bosses to be transferred somewhere closer to where she lives - because she can't afford to live anywhere else on $10.30 an hour with no health-care benefits or paid time off. Each month, she sends as much money as she can home to Puerto Rico to help with her mother's dialysis treatments. Since she started in July 2013, however, management hasn't let her move closer to home.

Lately, Vega has been involved in a campaign that she believes could change the conditions facing her - and thousands of other federal contractors - for the better.

On Monday, Good Jobs Nation, the labor-backed campaign that has organized nine strikes of contract workers in Washington, D.C.-area federal buildings, released a new report demanding that President Barack Obama use his executive authority to require that agencies take workers' pay and benefits into account when deciding how to award the $460 billion in annual contracts. For example, the government might reward companies that allow workers to unionize or have a committee to negotiate with management, or that pay at least $15 an hour and offer solid health benefits.

The calls for Obama to take more action come after he signed an executive order earlier this year boosting the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour from $7.25 an hour and signed another requiring firms to disclose past labor law violations in contract applications and potentially penalize them for such violations. The wage order affected 200,000 workers. Now Good Jobs Nation - a project of the Change to Win coalition, backed by unions such as the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - is working to build on successes.

"The President's recent executive orders to boost the minimum wage and prevent labor law violations on federal contracts start to address the problem," reads the short report that makes the case for two new executive orders. "But America's workers need more than the minimum to have a shot at the American Dream." The group said it will follow up with more strikes to drive the point home.

McDonald's did not respond to a request for comment.