This past March, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez issued a News Release announcing the overall unemployment rate for all veterans has dropped for the fourth consecutive year – this is great news. In an effort to assist in the employment of veterans, covered federal contractors are required to set a protected veteran hiring benchmark as part … Continue Reading
Since introducing its new scheduling letter in late 2014, OFCCP has made many important changes to enforcement in audits. From ramped up enforcement of the Agency’s VEVRAA and Section 503 regulations to new and very different ways to investigate pay systems for discrimination, the Agency has fundamentally changed how it conducts compliance reviews. And it’s … Continue Reading
In light of this week’s Supreme Court decision in Young v. United Parcel Service addressing the issue of accommodations and pregnancy discrimination, OFCCP has extended the public comment period for the Agency’s Sex Discrimination Regulation Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The public comment period now closes April 14, 2015. By extending the comment period by two … Continue Reading
In response to requests following publication of the final regulations implementing President Obama’s recent Executive Order addressing non-discrimination and affirmative action on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, OFCCP has published a directory of resources to assist federal contractors “around issues relating to creating an inclusive workplace of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender … Continue Reading
Get a jump start on the year and come learn what you need to know about all of the new and upcoming obligations for federal contractors. Join us at The OFCCP Institute’s first conference of 2015 in San Francisco on February 25th and 26th. We will do a deep dive into the many new obligations … Continue Reading
As Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez recently announced, OFCCP has updated its guidance to “make clear that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is discrimination based on sex” under Title VII and existing case law. By e-mail Director Patricia Shiu announced the release of Directive 2014-02, the purpose of which is to “clarify that … Continue Reading
As OFCCP tries to find new ways to attack the “pay gap,” the Agency is focused increasingly on novel and creative methods to uncover alleged pay discrimination. These “outside the box” investigations look beyond simply pay decisions (starting salary and pay adjustments) and instead examine employee selection processes – such as hiring decisions – and … Continue Reading
As we reported recently, President Obama intends to issue an Executive Order prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by federal contractors. Also in support of LGBT Pride Month, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez recently blogged that the DOL is “updating enforcement protocols and anti-discrimination guidance to clarify that [the DOL] provides the full protection … Continue Reading
As an update to our post last week, the Department of Labor’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking establishing a minimum wage for federal contractors has now been formally published in the Federal Register. With this publication, the 30-day public comment period starts to run, making the deadline to submit comments July 17, 2014. Comments can be submitted … Continue Reading
The Department of Labor released today its Notice of Proposed Rule Making to raise the minimum wage for federal workers to $10.10 an hour. The proposed rule implements Executive Order 13658, which was announced by the President on February 12, 2014. Once the proposed rule is officially published in the Federal Register the public will have … Continue Reading
Last week during The OFCCP Institute’s Annual Summit, Consuela Pinto from the Department of Labor’s Solicitor’s Office, in addition to speaking on other topics, touched on the impact of OFCCP’s new veteran and disability regulations thus far. Ms. Pinto confirmed OFCCP has not processed any violations based on audits involving application of the new regulations. … Continue Reading
As we mentioned earlier, at the SWARM Regional Conference this afternoon, Regional Director Melissa Speer and Deputy Director Aida Collins, answered questions from conference attendees about implementation of the new veteran and disability regulations. During the Q&A session, Melissa and Aida graciously took questions from the crowd about real-world implementation scenarios. For those questions they … Continue Reading
As we updated you last week, President Obama has signed an Executive Order increasing the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. After reading the the Order many employers still have questions surrounding the impact of the President’s executive action. We have prepared some FAQs to help answer these questions. The President … Continue Reading
Government contractors in the process of hiring new employees may be the first to experience ramifications from the government shutdown. The E-Verify system is “unavailable due to a government shutdown” as described when employers go to log into their E-Verify accounts. So, what should employers do to comply with the E-Verify requirements during the shutdown? The JL Immigration … Continue Reading
The federal government shut down all non-essential functions as of Tuesday at 12am. All OFCCP personnel have been declared “non-essential”, so OFCCP has ceased all operations for the duration of the shutdown. Ironically, OFCCP just sent a wave of audit letters to employers, apparently to get them out by the end of OFCCP’s fiscal year … Continue Reading
On Monday, June 10, 2013, the Equal Pay Act turned 50. President Obama commemorated this historic anniversary with public remarks at the White House in which he urged continuing pay equality efforts. Occupying a place of prominence, and an act no doubt intended to highlight the Agency’s efforts towards pay discrimination, Director Shiu stood behind … Continue Reading
As we’ve heard for the past couple of years, OFCCP is developing a cloud-based system that will allow Agency offices across the country to access the same information about federal contractors. In its 2014 budget justification document, OFCCP said it will implement a cloud-based system in FY 2014 enabling the agency to improve process standardization, reporting functionality, … Continue Reading
