OFCCP Says It May Use New EEOC Pay Data Report To Target Enforcement Efforts

Employee Relations, Employment Law, Inclusion and Diversity

In response to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the Labor Department suggests that it will use the misleading pay data in the new EEO-1 report to target federal contractors for audits when the new data becomes available in 2018.  The GAO report criticized the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) process for selecting contractors for review, for not training new compliance officers in a timely fashion, and for reducing its compliance assistance efforts.  Under an internal data-sharing agreement, EEOC provides the EEO-1 data it collects from employers who are federal contractors to OFCCP.  In response to the GAO report, OFCCP said:

• "The recently proposed EEO-1 pay data collection would provide more detailed information on federal contractor compensation disparity patterns, which we anticipate will further strengthen OFCCP's selection process;"
• It may require contractors to annually submit their Affirmative Action Programs and require annual certification that they are updated; and
• It will expand compliance assistance "contingent on resource availability."