Posts by: Editorial Board

OFCCP’s New Directive on Predetermination Notices Gives Contractors a Second Chance

Editorial BoardPosted on March 19, 2018

Effective February 27, 2018, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which is charged with ensuring federal contractors and subcontractors provide equal employment opportunity, issued Directive 2018-01, announcing that predetermination notices (PDNs) will be sent to federal contractors and subcontractors for all audits and compliance reviews where a finding of unlawful employment discrimination is imminent. READ MORE →

EEOC Announces Final Rule on Equal Pay Disclosures

Editorial BoardPosted on September 30, 2016

Yesterday, the EEOC announced that it had finalized a regulation that will increase disclosure requirements regarding employee compensation for thousands of businesses. The new rule, which we’ve blogged about previously, requires all businesses with 100 or more workers to submit pay data by gender, race and ethnicity on their EEO-1 forms. Specifically, employers will now need to provide:

GAO Report on OFCCP Cites Concerns Regarding Inconsistent Investigations, Lack of Staff Training and Contractor Selection Process

Editorial BoardPosted on September 27, 2016

The Government Accounting Office recently released a report on the DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). The report notes several concerns related to the Agency’s contractor selection process, investigator training and compliance assistance efforts. Further, the report details many of the concerns voiced by contractors regarding inconsistency in investigations and contractors’ overall distrust of the Agency in compliance assistance efforts. OFCCP received a draft of the report and, in its response to the draft report, agreed with some of the recommendations related to changes in the selection process and better monitoring of contactors for AAP compliance. Further, the Agency noted its efforts to improve training and compliance assistance.

Lauri Damrell Co-Authors Pay Equity Column with California Labor Commissioner

Editorial BoardPosted on August 15, 2016

Orrick partner Lauri Damrell collaborated with California Labor Commissioner Julie Su on a recent Op Ed column for the San Jose Mercury News outlining their joint efforts in California to address the gender pay gap. Damrell and Su are both members of the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, and their column discussed their recent launch of the California Pay Equity Task Force to encourage more collaboration between employers and employees in finding solutions to the high-profile issue.

EEOC Provides Second Bite of the Apple on EEO-1 Report Proposal

Editorial BoardPosted on July 22, 2016

The EEOC has provided a second chance to comment on its proposed revisions to the EEO-1 form. The revised proposal does not change the EEOC’s insistence on collecting pay and hours worked data and does not fully respond to employers’ concerns regarding the burden and usefulness of collecting the data. Rather, the EEOC revised the report to change the due dates to coordinate reporting of demographic and additional data beginning in March 2018. The comment period for the revised proposal closes August 15, 2016.

The EEOC’s efforts arise from the government’s larger efforts to enforce pay equity through a series of reporting, enforcement and voluntary initiatives. This reporting initiative follows a now-abandoned effort by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) to obtain pay data in an equal pay report. EEOC has joined with OFCCP to collect and share pay data to bolster its reporting and enforcement efforts.

On January 29, 2016, the EEOC asked the Office of Management and Budget to approve a change to the EEO-1 form. As discussed in more detail here, EEOC proposed that beginning in September 2017, EEO-1 filers with 100 or more employees would be required to submit EEO-1 data to include aggregated W-2 pay and hours worked data. The Agency scheduled hearings and invited various stakeholders including Orrick’s Gary Siniscalco to testify regarding the proposal. Orrick’s testimony can be found here. READ MORE →

Maryland Takes the Lead in Aggressive State Equal Pay Legislation

Editorial BoardPosted on May 28, 2016

Last week, Maryland became the most recent state to expand its equal pay protections, when Governor Larry Hogan signed the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act of 2016 (“Equal Pay Act”) into law. Maryland joins states like New York and California, which have some of the country’s most expansive equal pay protections. Unlike New York and California, Maryland’s law was signed by a Republican governor, which establishes that equal pay efforts have crossed party lines. The new law introduces two new features into the equal pay fray: gender identity and “work of comparable character.”

Maryland’s Amendment Would Expand Equal Pay to Include “Gender Identity,” Strengthen Protections Along Other More Familiar Lines

Editorial BoardPosted on April 25, 2016

As we noted in last week’s coverage of Equal Pay Day’s twentieth anniversary, the issue of equal pay has been drawing increasing attention from regulators, legislators and plaintiffs’ attorneys nationwide. Of particular note, a report issued in January 2016 by the National Women’s Law Center highlighted the unprecedented level of new equal pay legislation at the state level. Leading this wave of activity, both New York’s Achieve Pay Equity law and California’s Fair Pay Act law have in place the broadest protections for employees seeking to bring gender-based equal pay claims. Additionally, a number of other states have adopted piecemeal legislation addressing equal pay, such as prohibiting employer retaliation based on employee discussions of wages (Connecticut, New Hampshire, Oregon), holding state contractors responsible for certifying their equal pay compliance (Delaware, Minnesota, Oregon), increasing civil penalties for equal pay violations (Illinois), or requiring employers to maintain wage records in anticipation of potential state government inquiries (North Dakota).

Equal Pay Day 2016: Where Are We 20 Years Later?

Editorial BoardPosted on April 12, 2016

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of “Equal Pay Day,” which the National Committee on Pay Equity launched as a public awareness event in 1996 to symbolize how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. In more than 50 years since enactment of the federal Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), women have made significant progress in the workplace and now make up roughly half of the American workforce. However, women working full time still earn, on average, 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, and this number has barely moved in over a decade. That said, it is still not clear that employer bias is to blame for the gap that remains. Indeed, the pay gap measures only the difference in average earnings between all men and all women; it is not a proxy for pay bias—i.e., the failure to pay women equal pay for equal work. Eliminating pay bias is important, but focusing heavily on perceived employer bias obscures a much more complex web of factors contributing to the problem of pay differences between men and women.

DOL and EEOC to Make 2016 A Challenging Year for Employers

Editorial BoardPosted on March 10, 2016

Members of the Fair Labor Standards Legislation Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Labor and Employment Law recently met. The meeting includes employer and employee advocates, as well as government officials. The meeting often highlights not only the present status of regulations, policy and pending litigation but also provides a window into coming trends that may be important for employers. We highlight a few takeaways.

Mind the Gap: Obama Takes New Executive Action on Pay Equity in the Workplace

Editorial BoardPosted on April 15, 2014

Last week President Obama continued his administration’s push to tackle pay equity issues by taking executive action to put federal contractors’ compensation practices under greater scrutiny. On April 8, 2014, the President signed a memorandum and executive order designed to address race and gender-based disparities in compensation. The memorandum directs the Department of Labor (“DOL”) to propose a rule within 120 days requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to submit “summary data” on employee compensation by race and sex to the DOL using a “tool” to be developed by the agency. The executive order signed along with the memorandum bans federal contractors from retaliating against employees for discussing their compensation with each another in an effort to “enhance the ability of Federal contractors and their employees to detect and remediate unlawful discriminatory practices” in pay. READ MORE →

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