OFCCP Week In Review: December 17, 2018

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:

 

• Comment on Proposed Joint-Employer Rule
• Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Announced
• EEOC’s Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics Debut
• Covered Federal Contracts – Minimum Wage Increase
• Happy Holidays – We’ll be back in 2019!

 

 

Monday, December 10, 2018: Comment on Proposed Joint-Employer Rule

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) extended the time to submit comments regarding its proposed rulemaking to address its joint-employer standard.

Read our original story here when the Notice was proposed back in September.

The new deadline to submit comments is Monday, January 14, 2019.

Feedback for the NLRB?

Your company can comment directly to the NLRB here.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018: Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Announced

The Partnership for Public Service announced its rankings of The 2018 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. The views of more than 847,000 civil servants from 488 federal organizations comprise the data.

Overall Results

• 59.1% agencies saw their employee engagement scores decline.
• 39.6% agencies saw their employee engagement scores increase.
• 1.3% agencies saw their employee engagement scores stay the same.

These results represent a stark contrast to the previous three years when more than 70 percent of federal organizations experienced gains in how employees viewed their jobs and workplaces.

The Rankings

• NASA continues to be #1 of the 17 Large Agencies.
• Federal Trade Commission tops the list for the 27 Midsize Agencies. EEOC is at 15 and the Department of Labor at 19.
• Office of the General Counsel, part of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commision takes #1 in the Agency Subcomponents category. This is the largest category in the survey, totaling 415. OFCCP comes in at 399. The Agency has been in the lower quartile since the inception of the rankings in 2011. However, OFCCP showed an increase in Effective Leadership: Fairness, Employee Skills-Mission Match, Strategic Management, and Teamwork.

The index score is not a combined average of an agency’s category scores. It is calculated using a proprietary weighted formula that looks at responses to three different questions in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The more the question predicts intent to remain, the higher the weighting. Those questions are:

• I recommend my organization as a good place to work.
• Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job?
• Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization?

Friday, December 14, 2018: EEOC’s Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics Debut

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) held a series of “Data Dialogues” this week to introduce stakeholders to the Agency’s new Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA).  Advocacy groups, employer representatives, academics, and researchers, including non-profit organizations, participated in meetings at EEOC headquarters in Washington, D.C., to interact with OEDA’s leadership and hear about the new structure within the agency.

“It was clear to me the agency had to make some dramatic change to bring our capacity into the 21st century,” said EEOC Acting Chair Victoria A. Lipnic.  “We also had to address important issues about data protection, access, and internal data governance.  The new OEDA allowed us to do all of that.”

OEDA Purpose

Created in May 2018, ODEA will develop an enterprise-wide data analytics system to enhance mission effectiveness and make EEOC’s data readily available to both internal and external users. The Office will utilize state of the art data and information science tools now available to them.

Significance?

In addition to other functions, the OEDA team manages EEOC’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) surveys, which collect workforce data from employers, unions and labor organizations, state and local governments, and public and secondary school systems and includes the team of economists and statisticians who advise on large investigations. Historically this is where OFCCP has captured its data on who is a Federal Government Contractor. You may recall earlier this year, changes in the EEO-1 survey created confusion as the Agency tries to sort a way to capture employees of the GIG economy.

Reminder: Covered Federal Contracts – Minimum Wage Increase

Effective January 1, 2019. See details 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.