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Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs' enforcement analyzed
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The Center for Corporate Equality has issued an in-depth study, entitled, A Review of OFCCP Enforcement Statistics: A Call for Transparency in OFCCP Reporting. As the name suggests, the report analyzes the fiscal year 2007 enforcement results by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, part of the Department of Labor. From the press release,
Detailed findings outlined in CCE’s report include the types of systemic discrimination OFCCP resolved in FY 2007, the kinds of industries involved and the levels of employees and applicants impacted; how the financial remedies in settlement agreements were calculated; how long it took OFCCP to open compliance evaluations and resolve them through settlement; and any differences in enforcement strategy between the OFCCP’s six regional offices that audit federal contractor establishments.
“This comprehensive report provides a rare glimpse inside OFCCP’s enforcement operations,” said Patricia Schaeffer, executive director for the nonprofit employer association based in Washington DC. “It provides much needed transparency into how OFCCP enforces its equal employment and affirmative action mission,” she said. “We’re hopeful OFCCP will provide comparable in-depth data in their future enforcement reports,” she said.
Report co-author David Cohen, senior vice president, added “Our goal in analyzing this data was not to judge how OFCCP should conduct its enforcement operations, and this report contains no judgments. We simply wanted to analyze the conciliation agreements and consent decrees that made up OFCCP’s fiscal year 2007 enforcement results and report on what we found,” he said. “This report provides useful baseline data so enforcement trends can be tracked in future years.”
Eric Dunleavy Ph.D., senior consultant, said one of the key findings is “that systemic discrimination is an important OFCCP enforcement initiative.” “This data confirms what OFCCP has been telling us all along – that systemic discrimination is an important enforcement initiative, and it’s clear they have expended considerable resources into that area.”
This is a valuable study into the priorities and enforcement practices of one of the more active agencies working to eliminate discrimination in employment. OFCCP polices compliance with antidiscrimination rules of every private company that does work for the federal government. In recent years, OFCCP has had a large effect on changing the policies of private companies, arguably larger than that reached through litigation by the EEOC.
