Government Contracts Monitor
OFCCP Announces Intent To Create New Data-Collection Tool
August 17, 2011
On August 10, 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking. 76 Fed. Reg. 49398, available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-10/pdf/2011-20299.pdf. The advance notice indicated OFCCP’s desire to create new rules to collect employee compensation data from federal service or supply contractors. OFCCP argues that a new data collection tool is necessary to identify and eliminate alleged gender, race, and/or ethnicity pay gaps.
Among the issues on which OFCCP is inviting public comment are: (1) whether further investigation into contractor compensation decisions and policies is necessary; (2) if so, what job categories should be included in the data collection; (3) what elements of compensation should be collected (e.g., base salary, holiday pay, commissions, stock options, total W-2 earnings); (4) whether the new data collection tool should be used to conduct “nationwide multi-establishment compensation reviews”; (5) whether the data collection tool should be designed to permit contractors to do a self-assessment of OFCCP compliance; and (6) whether data collection should apply to construction contractors in addition to service or supply contractors. Of particular note is OFCCP’s consideration of “requiring businesses that are bidding on future Federal contracts to submit compensation data as part of the Request for Proposal process [which] may be used for trend analyses as well as targeting contractors for post-award compliance reviews.”
OFCCP invited public comments on this advance notice of proposed rulemaking by October 11, 2011. OFCCP also indicated that once proposed rules are actually published, additional comment will be invited from the public and both rounds of public comment will be considered by OFCCP before publication of any final rule.
Michael Schrier is responsible for the content of this article.