The OFCCP Week in Review (WIR) is a simple, fast and direct summary of relevant happenings in the OFCCP regulatory environment, authored by experts John C. Fox, Candee Chambers and Jennifer Polcer. In today’s edition, they discuss:

 

EEOC Seeks Input on Strategic Plan

Friday, December 8, 2017
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released for public comment a draft of its Strategic Plan for FY2018-2022. Comments must be submitted by 5:00 pm ET on Jan. 8, 2018. This draft plan has not been approved by the Commission and is still under review.

The Strategic Plan serves as a framework for the Commission to achieve its mission through the implementation of three strategic objectives the EEOC is now proposing to champion:

  1. Combat and prevent employment discrimination through the strategic application of EEOC’s law enforcement authorities.
  2. Prevent employment discrimination and promote inclusive workplaces through education and outreach.
  3. Achieve organizational excellence.

Subsequent outcomes and performance measures are also outlined, see pages 14-17 of the EEOC’s draft Plan.

The EEOC is soliciting comments from their public partners, including employers covered by one or more of the statutes the Commission enforces, advocacy groups and individuals.

Action Item:

DirectEmployers will be submitting comments on our Members’ behalf. Review the draft plan and watch for a Survey Monkey link to come next week.

 

USDOL Offers More Buyouts to OFCCP Staff

Friday, December 8, 2017
The OFCCP has begun a second round of buyouts of employees and managers by offering yet another opportunity for eligible staff members to take a “buyout” of their employment or an “early out” retirement for those nearing retirement eligibility. These offers come only three months after the August 2017 first round of buy-outs, see WIR 8/28/17, which had sought as many as 100 OFCCP personnel to give up their jobs and accelerate the shrinkage of the agency’s headcount. However, only 28 OFCCP personnel (about 5% of OFCCP’s remaining workforce) reportedly took the buyouts USDOL offered in round one. The deadline for OFCCP personnel to accept the buyouts now being offered in this round is December 15, 2017, with an eye to having those who accept the buyouts out of the OFCCP by the end of this calendar year. OFCCP personnel who accept early retirement will leave OFCCP on dates to be negotiated, but probably not later than the end of January 2018.

Bottom Line:

The OFCCP is currently already at its lowest headcount since its start-up in the mid-1960s and is sure to face additional budget cuts for FY2018 (that budget is still being negotiated on Capitol Hill, see OFCCP Week in Review: September 18, 2017). Nonetheless, OFCCP audits are still underway, albeit at a record slow pace at just under 1,000/year nationwide. The number of audits OFCCP will conduct in the remainder of FY2018 will now reduce further in lock step with the shrinking numbers of OFCCP investigators. Moreover, the pace of many of those audits will be further slowed as OFCCP managers reassign audit responsibilities, including reassigning audits across OFCCP District Office lines to available investigators in the wake of exiting OFCCP investigators.

 

BLS Released the ‘Employment Situation’

Friday, December 8, 2017
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released The Employment Situation – November 2017. Highlights include:

  • The civilian unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, remained steady at its 17-year low at 4.1%.
    • That leaves about 6.6 million people short-term unemployed with some unknown percentage of those individuals available for hire.
  • Manufacturing hit a new record low unemployment figure of 2.6%. Side note: “Full employment” in America is now thought to be about 4.6% (so a percentage unemployment figure lower than the “full employment” percentage means that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs are currently going unfilled).
  • Construction unemployment (nationwide) is surprisingly high at 5%.
  • The veteran unemployment rate is 4.0%, down from 4.8% last November. See the full Veteran Employment update here. Expect OFCCP to soon lower (again) its “Protected Veterans” Benchmark for Hires, currently at 6.7% (since last adjusted downward from 6.9% on March 31, 2017).
  • Over the year, the unemployment rate is down by ½ percentage point and the number of unemployed is down by almost 800,000 persons.
    • However, the unemployment rate for teenagers increased to 15.9% in November.
  • The jobless rates by gender and race stayed relatively steady: adult men (3.7%), adult women (3.7%), Whites (3.6%), Blacks (7.3%), Asians (3.0%), and Hispanics (4.7%).

Recruiters:

  • The number of “long-term unemployed” (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged (about 1.6M persons). This group accounts for almost 25% of the unemployed and has been the pool to supply over 34% (275,000) of the new hires over the past year. Companies need special strategies to find this pool of prospective employees and may require revamped and specialized onboarding procedures to properly transition these new hires so long out of touch with the marketplace.
  • The number of persons employed part-time who wished they worked full-time remained unchanged at 4.8M available persons, even though this has been a superior pool from which to make full-time hires (over 858,000) over the past year.

Action Items:

To be successful in recruiting in these days, when recruitment pools are shrinking, employers must be resourceful and design ways to tap into the diversity, disability, part-time and “longer-term unemployment” pools where most employers have been harvesting the majority of their recruits over the last year. Individuals with disabilities and minorities continue to be the largest groups facing unemployment.

 

OFCCP Director Named–Take Two!

Monday, December 11, 2017
On Sunday, December 10, Ondray Harris started as the new Director of the OFCCP. Harris first joined the Department of Labor in June, as a Senior Advisor.

Harris holds a law degree from Washington and Lee University and has a diverse background in employment law, setting him up well for his new role. He has worked as the Assistant Attorney General in Richmond, Virginia, practiced management-side labor and employment law as a Partner at LeClair Ryan and has offered consulting services throughout his career. He held a Senate-confirmed post in George W. Bush’s Justice Department where he worked with communities across the United States in resolving race, color, and national origin conflicts. His employment law practical experience from both the public and private sectors is an exciting addition to a team faced with so much recent scrutiny and calls for reform.

How We Got Here:

 

EEOC Pay Data Halt Challenged in Court

LATE REPORT: Wednesday, November 15, 2017
This time, Democracy Forward and the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) filed a lawsuit on November 15, 2017, against the Trump Administration on behalf of NWLC and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA). Their claim is that the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) does not have the legal authority to stay a collection of data required by an agency rule (the EEOC, in this case).

The suit, which was filed against OMB, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and government officials, seeks to reinstate the requirement that companies with 100 or more employees report how much they pay their workers by race, gender, and ethnicity.

As things stand now, the pay component of the EE0-1 report is still on hold and will not be a required reporting field on the March 31, 2018, EEO-1 Report.

How We Got Here:

 


THIS COLUMN IS MEANT TO ASSIST IN A GENERAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CURRENT LAW AND PRACTICE RELATING TO OFCCP. IT IS NOT TO BE REGARDED AS LEGAL ADVICE. COMPANIES OR INDIVIDUALS WITH PARTICULAR QUESTIONS SHOULD SEEK ADVICE OF COUNSEL.

Reminder: If you have specific OFCCP compliance questions and/or concerns or wish to offer suggestions about future topics for the OFCCP Week In Review, please contact your membership representative at (866) 268-6206 (for DirectEmployers Association Members), or email Jennifer at jpolcer@directemployers.org with your ideas.

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John C. Fox
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