In a new Directive titled “Effective Compliance Evaluations and Enforcement” (DIR 2022-02) OFCCP announced it had withdrawn what the Trump OFCCP Director had called his “four pillars” of Agency policy and procedure. The “pillars” were known by the acronym “CERT.” Former OFCCP Director Craig Leen had spoken passionately during his three-year tenure about Certainty, Efficiency, Recognition, and Transparency, the four “pillars” he had established at the Agency and upon which he founded all policy.

One of the reasons past OFCCP Administrations have chosen NOT to publish new policies is that change arouses the contractor community, grabs its attention for a moment and causes both OFCCP personnel and contractors to suddenly learn in that short but intense moment of attention how limited OFCCP’s legal and operational authority actually is. This new OFCCP Directive is no different as our discussion below will illustrate to expose and explode many OFCCP “urban myths.”

What Just Happened?

Just like watching a movie on a TV screen during weather changing ahead of a coming windstorm, Contractor “picture screens” of OFCCP enforcement policies and procedures just went from crisp to fuzzy, with occasional black screens and just as key scenes in the drama were approaching.  By withdrawing the Trump Administration’s four “pillars,” the result is that the new OFCCP Directive returns OFCCP procedures and policy to the “old days” in which local discretionary decision-making occurred audit by audit. Contractors had lauded the Trump OFCCP pillars because they provided greater certainty to previously highly discretionary and murky OFCCP policies and procedures by specifying how OFCCP would proceed in given situations. The new OFCCP Directive embraces some of the concepts of the Trump OFCCP pillars, but in a much less structured manner.

More importantly, the new Directive removes almost all specific procedures OFCCP was instructed to deploy and now replaces that specificity of action with broad general platitudes returning OFCCP decision-making to the backrooms of OFCCP offices. (We know of one law firm which has already put in an order for Magic Prediction 8 Balls to give to clients experiencing OFCCP audits in the future to now help their clients predict OFCCP’s next steps in those audits).

Contractors will not like the loss of certainty and predictability of OFCCP action or the differential treatment which will now return to OFCCP District Offices which will now behave and proceed differently from other District Offices and differently across OFCCP Region lines (the “40 OFCCPs” problem). Contractors will now learn in future years, only through a collection of experiences, one audit at a time, how OFCCP has instructed audit personnel to proceed, how to exercise their discretion and how to deploy their investigatory procedures.

What Went Away?

DIR 2021-02 “Certainty in OFCCPs Policies & Practices” (see WIR* 12/15/20)

This Directive held the Agency accountable to conduct ongoing (at least annual) reviews of the Agency’s policies and procedures.

“Upon reconsideration, OFCCP does not believe an annual review of all policies and practices is practical or necessary.” See numbered section 5 of the new Directive, last para.

Editor’s Note: This seems differential to many contractors who immediately observed that OFCCP nonetheless expects federal contractors to annually evaluate all their hiring, promotion, involuntary termination, and compensation systems. What’s good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander.

DIR 2020-02 “Efficiency in Compliance Evaluations” (see WIR* 4/17/20)

This Directive held the Agency accountable to keep audits from “aging” by requiring that the Agency reach out to a contractor undergoing an audit every 30 days.

Editor’s Note: Of course, OFCCP never did this, in fact, other than in two OFCCP Regions for about 6 months. And aging audits, which this Trump era practice was designed to reduce, remain problematic within OFCCP still to this day. This is true even though the Trump OFCCP did close thousands of older OFCCP audits the Obama Administration stockpiled and many of which had stalled many years before and had been left open but unattended. Nonetheless, what seemed like it would take only a “one-year surge effort” to knock down the “Obama Bulge” turned into four years and still did not finish the job. Even today, there are still many Obama and Trump era OFCCP audits still open and languishing. And many contractors do not hear from OFCCP about these audits for months on end, often times not any earlier than 6-12 months.

We hear stories weekly from contractors and see nothing in the new Directive designed to finally eliminate these old OFCCP audits or to increase OFCCP’s efficiency. OFCCP’s audit efficiency is at its lowest performance level in the history of the agency and falling… even while resorting heavily to “quickie” “Compliance Check” audits (400 construction contractors) in this audit cycle.

 

OFCCP “Compliance Evaluation” Chart

Audit Completions Per Fiscal Year OFCCP FTEs Audits Per FTE
2011: 4,014 775 5.2
2012: 4,007 755 5.3
2013: 4,110 | Target: 4,530 729 5.6
2014: 3,987 | Target: 4,290 683 5.8
2015: 2,718 621 4.3
2016: 1,151 615 1.8
2017: 1,142 556 2
2018: 812 514 1.6
2019: 1,343 500 2.7
2020: 1,320 472 2.7
2021: 1,125 451 2.5
2022: 219 (thru Q1) 451 1.9

 

DIR 2018-06 “Recognition of Contractors Program” (see WIR* 8/24/18)

This Directive did not formalize any specific award programs (only that they were coming). However, shortly after the 2018 Directive, OFCCP announced the “Excellence in Disability Inclusion” (EDI) Award and further announced in March of 2020 the inaugural winners (CVS & PepsiCo). It is unclear if this program is gone as the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) co-sponsored the award with OFCCP. The EDI website link remains active, but since OFCCP and ODEP did not announce any winners in 2021, it stands to reason that this program has fallen by the wayside.

Nonetheless, despite withdrawing its “Recognition” Directive, OFCCP reports that it still intends to support the HIRE initiative (see our story “HIRE Launched With Discussion of “Reimagined” Recruitment Ideas”) to engage “a broad range of stakeholders to recognize innovative initiatives and evidence-based research to advance equity in recruitment and hiring practices, which the agency will utilize in providing compliance assistance resources.”

DIR 2018-08 “Transparency in OFCCP Compliance Activities” (see WIR* 9/19/18)

This Directive formalized the tradition going back to the Bush and Obama Administrations of two automatic contractor extensions: first, a 45-day scheduling delay after OFCCP issued a Corporate Scheduling Announcement List (CSAL), and thereafter an automatic 30-day extension for contractors to submit updated hiring, promotion, involuntary hiring and compensation data, and other support data once OFCCP issued an audit Letter scheduling to the contractor to commence the audit in fact for one of the AAP Establishments OFCCP had pre-announced on the CSAL.

“The agency is rescinding DIR 2018-08, Transparency in OFCCP Compliance Activities, to minimize the delay in remedying employment discrimination and positively impact more workers. DIR 2018-08 contains several policies that have caused misunderstanding and delay, such as dividing the AAP into a data portion and a non-data portion for desk audit submission and authorizing an automatic 30-day extension for submitting key compensation, employment activity, and other support data. This support data and the complete AAP provide the foundation for OFCCP’s evaluation of a contractor’s employment practices. In addition, DIR 2018-08 formalized an additional automatic 45-day scheduling delay after the issuance of a Corporate Scheduling Announcement List (CSAL) to notify contractors that they are included in OFCCP’s scheduling list. As provided below, OFCCP is modifying these policies because they run counter to OFCCP’s goal of conducting comprehensive compliance evaluations that foster consistent accountability and timely submission of required information.”

Editor’s Note: This reduction in contractor time to OFCCP data demands seems very odd for OFCCP to decree since few contractors have required extensions to produce the data OFCCP sought in audits. Rather, most contractors just hunker down and dredge and report the requested data, however onerous and large the request. To be sure, this immediate response contractor practice changed temporarily for many contractors during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic when many HR managers had a difficult time retrieving data from overworked IT and data support personnel working remote. But that was a short-lived one-time phenomenon, and then the requested delay was typically for only a few weeks to gather and report the requested data.

Moreover, OFCCP has not even started audits yet from its 2020 and its two 2021 CSALs…so OFCCP does not now have, and has never had, a habit of auditing any earlier than an average of 6-12 months AFTER it formed its next CSAL audit list.  Through December 31, 2021, for example, OFCCP had scheduled only 120 of the 400 Construction audits OFCCP announced in its September 1, 2021 CSAL for construction contractor audits. In fact, OFCCP reports it scheduled no construction audits (“zero”) in October, November, and December 2021. So OFCCP did not schedule almost 3/4ths of that CSAL for at least four months after issuance of its CSAL. (OFCCP has yet to publish FY 2022 Q2 (Jan/Feb/Mar) audit data to know how many more, if any, of the 300 construction contractors awaiting OFCCP audit Scheduling Letters as of January 1, 2022 springing from the September 1, 2021 Construction CSAL have heard yet from OFCCP.)

OFCCP’s suggestion that contractors are to blame for OFCCP’s growing inefficiency will not endear itself to contractors which routinely endure “hurry up and wait demands” from OFCCP while OFCCP routinely gaps 3 to 6-months in audit responses, typically, without any contact, apology, or explanation.   

Editor’s Note: At the time of this report, the rescinded Directives are no longer on the OFCCP webpage. However, it seems reasonable to believe they will soon appear on the “Rescission Notices” webpage.

What’s New?

Although listed at the bottom of the Directive, it is worth noting before reading any further:

This directive does not create new legal rights or requirements or change current legal rights or requirements for contractors.”

So, take a breath, and we now get into it…

There are four topics (new pillars?) in the “Policies & Procedures” section. Below each heading here, we have included key takeaways using exact verbiage from OFCCP’s new Directive wherever possible.

1. Compliance Evaluation and Strategic Enforcement Objectives

OFCCP will strengthen the effectiveness of compliance evaluations and promote greater contractor compliance…”

  • This section says the Agency will conduct comprehensive compliance evaluations and “avoid delay.” It will promote a “proactive approach to compliance” hoping for contractors to “actively self-audit.” Also, there should be “transparent communication by all parties.” However, OFCCP supplied no details.
  • The only (somewhat) tangible item is “Implementing a coordinated, cross-regional approach to conducting multi-establishment compliance reviews.” The approach has no requirements other than “coordinating evaluations of common policies and patterns across establishments.” Director Yang is now the fifth OFCCP Director in a row to announce this “new” “reform.”

Key Takeaways

Nothing new or substantial in this section.

2. Compliance Evaluation Scheduling and Timely Desk Audit Submission

“To promote efficiency in compliance evaluations, reach additional contractors and positively impact more workers…”

Scheduling

  1. Neutral” Scheduling Chopped? OFCCP makes the bald statement that it is “enhancing its neutral scheduling procedures.” However, OFCCP has provided no information as to how it will undertake “neutral” scheduling procedures or exactly what it is changing. And, as you will see in the next paragraph, OFCCP did leave contractors with the suggestion that the agency is exercising discretion in its audit selection methodologies (raising potential Fourth Amendment issues, if so) while nonetheless baldly labeling that exercise of discretion to be “neutral.” (Listen to what I say; not what I do).
  2. Note: OFCCP makes no claim any longer its audit selections will be “random.” Contractors will just have to wait for the so-called “Transparency Letter” (see below) which, since the Trump Administration, has accompanied each new CSAL and has provided a detailed explanation of how, exactly, OFCCP chose its audit targets for that CSAL.
    • What OFCCP does say is that it plans to “reach a broader universe of contractors and subcontractors and to identify those with greater risk factors for noncompliance with nondiscrimination and affirmative action requirements.” This statement raises substantial questions: What “risk factors,” how would OFCCP identify and gather these “risk factors” and has it validated each such “risk factor” as indeed correlated to non-compliance? If OFCCP has now identified such a compass showing the way ahead in audit selections, it will be the first OFCCP Administration to have found the magic which has eluded all OFCCP’s predecessor administrations. And how would OFCCP know that from either contractor EE0-1 filings or (eventually) from the data entered into the AAP verifications of completed AAPs without exercising its discretion?
  3. OFCCP “Transparency Letter” Re Audit Selection Methodology To Continue. The Agency reports it will continue to provide its scheduling methodology as it began under Trump OFCCP Director Ondray Harris. The Transparency Letter came about accidentally in response to an on-site Town Hall meeting of DirectEmployers Member companies at OFCCP Headquarters where a spontaneous discussion revealed to surprised senior OFCCP policy managers the strong concern the contractor community had about the agency’s audit scheduling methodology. To its great credit, the OFCCP responded only about three weeks later when Marika Litras, then the Director of the OFCCP Enforcement Division, published for public view a succinct but detailed step-by-step report of how OFCCP had selected Supply & Service contractors for audit in its last CSAL. This is a very good tradition and seems destined to continue regardless of the plight of the CSAL, discussed next.
  4. WHERETO THE CSAL, NOW THAT OFCCP HAS REMOVED THE 45-DAY WARNING RUNWAY OF COMING OFCCP AUDITS? OFCCP reports it will continue to post a CSAL, although its utility seems to have been completely overtaken and undermined by OFCCP’s AAP Verification Initiative, and now with the removal of the 45-audit delay mechanism. It is important to remember that the CSAL was an OFCCP career employee recommendation to then Bush Administration (the son) OFCCP Director Charles James to make OFCCP more efficient by putting contractors on advance notice of coming OFCCP audits. The thinking was that OFCCP otherwise too often caught contractors by surprise. With the 45-day warning, it was thought, contractors could then have their AAPs tidy and ready for the coming audit. But, of course, the new OFCCP Verification Initiative (whether illegal or not) will collect “certifications” that the contractor’s AAPs are “developed and maintained” and thus are ready for OFCCP audit.
    • By the way, now that you understand that the VERY purpose of the CSAL was to give contractors an advance warning of coming OFCCP audits, you will now appreciate that OFCCP’s new decision to remove that advance warning time now defeats the entire purpose of the CSAL. So, OFCCP’s removal of the 45-day built-in delay before OFCCP begins to schedule audits from the new CSAL seems very confused to put it kindly. And that is even before one considers the impact on the CSAL and its continuing utility once OFCCP collects AAP “verifications” affirming to OFCCP that the referenced AAP Establishments have “developed” and have “maintained” AAPs in place, and thus ready for audit. Once OFCCP thinks this through, CSALs will be another OFCCP relic of the past. Roll wrecking ball.

Here is what OFCCP said about the demise of the 45-day advance warning:

To promote efficiency, OFCCP will no longer delay scheduling contractors for 45 days after the issuance of a CSAL. As of the effective date of this Directive, OFCCP may begin scheduling contractors upon the publication of the CSAL.” (emphasis added)

Editor’s Note:

  • The September 11, 2020 CSAL is still active (see WIR 9/11/20)
  • The last CSAL for Supply & Service Contractors was July 1, 2021 (see WIR 7/1/21)
  • The last CSAL for Construction Contractors was September 1, 2021 (see WIR 9/1/21)

Timely Desk Audit Submission & Extensions for Extraordinary Circumstances

“… supply and service contractors must annually certify that they have developed and maintained complete AAPs in compliance with OFCCP’s requirements through its Contractor Portal.” (fn 8, omitted) (see our WIR “OFCCP’s New Emerging AAP Delivery Portal and AAP “Verification” Program: Much Ado About Nothing”)

  • Given that OFCCP believes it will soon have Contractor Portal certifications in hand from contractors that the contractors have their AAPs on hand and ready to be delivered to OFCCP for audit, the Agency has signaled that it is going to insist on contractors delivering their AAPs within 30-days of the contractor’s receipt of OFCCP’s audit Scheduling Letter. This will now be the ninth OFCCP Director to announce a “get tough” policy on AAP timely receipt practices. Same song. Different verse.
  • Here is what OFCCP said exactly: Contractors must “submit all AAPs and itemized listing data, including support data, within 30 calendar days.” (Fn 9, omitted)
  • However, “Where a contractor needs additional time, OFCCP may grant an extension for extraordinary circumstances pursuant to the policies provided in 7(b)(ii)(b) below.” Now, when it is a contractor duty, OFCCP broke rank and decided to get specific and prescriptive in its Directive: Here are OFCCP’s  examples to its Compliance Officers of “extraordinary circumstances” which may qualify for a contractor’s extension of time to deliver its AAPs for audit:
    • “extended medical absences of key personnel;
    • death in the immediate family of key personnel;
    • localized or company-specific disaster affecting records retrieval such as a fire, flood, or computer virus;
    • unexpected military service absence of key personnel; and
    • unexpected turnover or departure of key affirmative action official.” (Fn 10, omitted)

The section references the Scheduling Letter FAQs on the OFCCP webpage.

Editor’s Note: There is always handwringing on both sides of this AAP delivery date question (at OFCCP and among busy contractor compliance personnel). However, it is all a waste of otherwise perfectly good anxiety which could be saved to worry about other real problems. It is all a worry for naught as to the exact AAP delivery date. This is for many reasons.

First, it is relatively rare that contractors need extra time to respond to OFCCP with their AAPs. But when contractors do need more time, it is for a good and sufficient reason which cannot be legislated away by the stroke of a pen at OFCCP seeking to dictate the impossible. Some contractors need more time than 30 days to respond to OFCCP’s audit Scheduling Letter because of poor timing relative to contractor “high-tide” leave periods (around the end-of-year holidays or the last week of summer before school starts in the Fall, etc.). However, the greatest issue inducing delayed response typically occurs when the contractor’s AAP is more than six months old and OFCCP is not requesting just the contractors on-the-shelf-AAPs but is also requesting reams of “updated data” described in 3-pages of 22 document requests known as the “Itemized Listing” and appended to OFCCP’s two-page audit Scheduling Letter. So, this is much ado about nothing: the contractor is going to work hard to gather, organize, and quality control check the data OFCCP is requesting, and OFCCP is going to grant the contractor more time when needed.

Second, OFCCP has no effective recourse regardless of when the contractor delivers its AAP and Itemized Listing Support Data to the agency. This is why this issue comes up over and over again in every administration like a bad penny. There is no financial penalty for a delayed contractor delivery. There is no reward or punishment. The only two things OFCCP can do is to ask its Solicitors to sue the contractor to debar it for failing to comply with OFCCP’s arbitrary data delivery deadline. (NOTE: OFCCP does not have injunctive authority, nor the authority to economically “fine” a contractor. Rather, OFCCP’s only tool is to debar the contractor,…but that takes both years to accomplish and a recalcitrant contractor (both) which refuses to comply). However, by the time the Solicitors got around to filing the Complaint, the contractor would have many months (or years) before that to deliver the delayed AAPs and Itemized Listing data response. Moreover, delivery of even a late AAP would purge (and thus lift) the Debarment Order, which would take the Solicitors years to obtain at any rate.

Alternatively, OFCCP thinks it can write up a Conciliation Agreement (“CA”) to require the contractor to supply its AAPs on time in the future. However, that CA would fail for two different reasons. First, OFCCP does not have injunctive authority. Second, OFCCP’s longstanding practice is to use CAs to resolve on-going problems not quickly corrected before or during OFCCP’s audit. CAs are to fix what’s broken and establish new contractor systems going forward. But, if the contractor has already fixed the problem, there is nothing for OFCCP to “correct” in the future. There is no need for a CA simply memorializing a transitory problem which no longer exists.

By the way, it was this very realization of OFCCP’s inability to enforce AAP submission deadlines which led OFCCP Director Shirley Wilcher (Clinton Administration) to think wistfully about the concept of “Term Debarments” for contractor procedural foibles…like not turning in AAP data in a timely manner. However, this idea failed for want of both a Presidential Amendment to the Executive Order, and/or Rules to implement any such sanction. Moreover, it would all be for naught, at any rate, as OFCCP debarments are NOT punitive (i.e., NOT punishments) for past misconduct. Rather, OFCCP debarments are available only to incent future compliance…which is why OFCCP debarments, once issued by the Administrative Review Board, cannot be enforced once the contractor agrees to comply with OFCCP’s Rules…including turning in an AAP to OFCCP however late. [For the lawyers reading this, OFCCP debarment is the administrative equivalent of “judicial civil contempt”…NOT “criminal contempt”: the person in civil contempt has the proverbial “keys to the courthouse door” to “purge” (get rid of) the contempt by agreeing to comply with the court’s order: i.e., the news reporter agrees to give up his/her source who was an eye-witness to the crime being prosecuted; the lawyer agrees to behave in the courtroom per the Judge’s instructions; the Trump guys agree to cough up their cell phone records and e-mails as to the June 6 riot, or whatever else is being investigated, etc.].

Practice Tip: Try to timely comply with OFCCP’s data requests on the schedule the agency requests, as per the usual. But if you cannot meet OFCCP’s requested deadline for whatever reason, simply politely advise OFCCP of the approximate date you can tender to OFCCP the information the agency has requested and go about your work. OFCCP will appreciate the projected date of performance so it can calendar the date you promise to next reply to the agency.

Key Takeaways

OFCCP reports that it will continue the use of the “Transparency Letter” and the periodic, unscheduled CSAL notice. (NOTE, we are not sure why OFCCP would continue the CSAL—which it has now gutted of any remaining purpose–other than that contractors do not like change and they do like this tool even as OFCCP has now rendered it obsolete). However, the 45-day delay in scheduling audits after the CSAL publishes is gone, gone, gone. Given the push to “require” contractors to certify their AAPs in the Contractor Portal, the Agency expects Contractors to present their AAP as required (within 30 calendar days) upon receiving an audit Scheduling Letter. There is no more automatic 30-day extension to submit hires. promotions, involuntary terminations, compensation, and other support data. However, worry about submitting data to OFCCP on any arbitrary or inconvenient schedule should be saved for other things in one’s work life deserving of worry. Make your best effort to comply with OFCCP’s arbitrary data delivery deadline but turn it in whenever you can reasonably get it done, whether early or late.

3. Requests for Supplemental Information and Data

“To promote the timely and efficient exchange of information needed to conduct a compliance evaluation…”

  • OFCCP reiterates its long-standing policy that the agency may request supplemental data, follow-up interviews, and/or additional records and information if the contractor’s desk audit submission is incomplete or OFCCP identifies issues that warrant further analysis.” (Fn 12, omitted)
  • “When requesting this supplemental information, OFCCP will reasonably tailor the request to the areas of concern, allow contractors a reasonable time to respond, and include the basis for the request.” (Fn 13: “OFCCP is not obligated to share the statistical analysis during this stage (e.g., standard deviation, b-coefficient, etc.). If OFCCP has preliminary findings after refining the analysis, OFCCP will issue a predetermination notice that describes the statistical findings.”)
    • This is a lawyer answer: “It provides a technically correct answer which does not tell you a damn thing.” OFCCP Pre-Determination Notices from the Trump Administration to date in the Biden Administration have not disclosed sufficient detail for contractors to understand or be convinced by OFCCP’s claims, let alone allow contractors to replicate liability and damages calculations in statistical cases. So, OFCCP is promising more “cat and mouse” games which so often lead to impasse and cause audit resolution to fail.
  • When entering conciliation discussions, OFCCP will request wage and benefits data and will consider information the contractor provides on mitigation, such as employee turnover data, for the purpose of accurately estimating make-whole relief. The exchange of this data will expedite the conciliation process.”

Editor’s Note: While John Fox introduced OFCCP (in 1989) to the concept of turnover data to measure mitigation of damages in failure-to-hire systemic discrimination claims, it has its place BUT is rarely the proper analysis to use universally for damages analyses (to calculate the time by which a rejected Applicant should have “mitigated” (meaning minimized or avoided entirely) his or her damages following any unlawful rejection based on a Protected Status.

Key Takeaways

The Agency will ask for what it wants when it wants it, and will be as transparent, or not, as its managers instruct them to be. Contractors will just have to wait until audits in which OFCCP raises discrimination claims to see what OFCCP really intends to disclose to aid contractors to determine if there is a genuine discrimination problem or not. Even before this Directive stripping back transparency to contractors, OFCCP has spent the last six years asking contractors to accept their proposed offers of settlement without the benefit of transparency or to allow contractors to understand OFCCP’s discrimination claims, let alone replicate OFCCP’s liability or damages “analyses.”

4. Access to Employees, Applicants, and Other Witnesses

“To facilitate efficient compliance evaluations, OFCCP underscores the importance of contractors providing access to their premises and records relevant to OFCCP’s investigation…”

  • This section starts with a footnote indicating the provision also applies to complaint investigations.
  • During “investigations OFCCP will request that contractors provide the agency with unredacted contact information such as telephone numbers, mailing addresses, email addresses, and social security numbers for these individuals.”
  • During OFCCP interviews with upper-level management, an attorney or company representative may be present.
  • During OFCCP interviews with nonmanagement personnel, “the contractor does not have the right to have a representative present.” However, the employee may request to have a representative present, to which the OFCCP will determine if the request is out of fear or intimidation by the employer.

Editor’s Note: John Fox was the author (while at OFCCP in 1982) of this OFCCP practice, in an attempt to work a compromise with the contractor community. But an important element of that historic compromise has now been removed. Of course, OFCCP has no legal authority to demand the use of space on a contractor’s premises to interview or “spread out,” or to order contractor employees and managers about, let alone on company payroll or those employees who need to be at their workstations at a given time.

Contractor representatives may, of course, always be present when ANY of their employees are being interviewed on company premises, whether managers or rank and file employees. OFCCP representatives are “business invitees” when on  company premises and must follow the host company’s rules of engagement on company premises. If the company chooses not to honor OFCCP’s request to privately interview company employees on premises, or to not permit interview of employees on company time and money, OFCCP may always choose to do so after hours outside the company’s premises.    

Key Takeaways

In this section, the OFCCP flexes its muscles as to its ability to speak to employees, former employees, applicants, or other witnesses. There is no change of law here. While most contractors try to accommodate OFCCP’s on-site preferences, contractors may choose to participate or not. And contractors have to soberly consider the advice I have given for over 30 years: allowing OFCCP on-site to conduct interviews may be a better alternative to OFCCP interviewing your employees off-site after work hours at some local bar near the office or plant. What do you value; what do you fear?

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