August 29, 2017, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) notified the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that it was initiating a review and immediate stay of the revised EEO-1 form announced by EEOC in September of 2016. The new form, which was to be used beginning on March 31, 2018, sought more information than its predecessor relating to total compensation and total hours worked by race, ethnicity, and gender. It was anticipated that this requirement would have covered approximately 60,000 employers—including many government contractors subject to Executive Order 11246, and 63 million employees.
Proponents of the revised form argued that pay discrimination was difficult to detect because of insufficient information regarding employees’ earnings. The EEOC believed the information collected on the new form would improve agency investigations. On the other hand, the form’s opponents contended that the additional information it sought was unnecessarily burdensome and would have created far too much paperwork.
In support of its decision, the OMB indicated that EEOC’s data file specifications, which were released after the revised form, “were not contained in the Federal Register notices as part of the public comment process nor were they outlined in the supporting statement for collection of information.” As such, these specifications were not subject to public comment and were not accounted for in the burden estimates conducted prior to the release of the revised form. Additionally, the OMB was “concerned that some aspects of the revised collection of information lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues.” The OMB memo is available here.
As a result of the OMB stay, contractors subject to the EEO-1 reporting requirements will not have to comply with the revised form’s requirements during the review period. Instead, they will be able comply with their reporting obligations for FY 2017 by submitting the previously approved EEO-1 form to comply with their obligations.
Time will tell if and when the revised EEO-1 form will be put back into service, but that does not appear likely to happen soon.
We will continue to monitor and report on developments in this matter.
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