In a world where change seems to be everywhere, it is reassuring to know there are a few things that are constants. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Traffic will be congested when driving in a major city during rush hour. The federal government will issue regulations and some people will be unhappy about these regulations. While people are also in a constant state of change, something we traditional...

When the Trump administration released its proposed budget for the upcoming federal fiscal year, the budget contained a proposal for a major change involving two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights agencies, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Regardless of whether and when this change will occur, the propo...

The first few weeks of the new presidential administration have produced a number of surprises in various realms. However, there has been relatively little activity involving the regulatory agencies that deal with employment issues. This is in part due to the absence of a Secretary of Labor. As of the publication date of this article, the Trump administration’s first nominee for Secretary of Labor has withdrawn, and...

In January of 2017, Donald Trump will be president of the United States. This is not what the political pundits expected, and it is not what most service providers working in the affirmative action/equal opportunity area expected. Now that a Trump presidency is a reality, it is time to determine how this affects organizations that must comply with the federal affirmative action laws. How Are the Federal Affirmative Act...

I’m writing this article on November 9, the day after the 2016 presidential election. I had planned to write a somewhat different article for The OFCCP Digest, but with the election of Donald Trump, the regulatory environment is almost certain to change in very dramatic ways in the coming years. Thus, I’m going to provide some thoughts on what has occurred in the affirmative action realm in the last few years, and wha...

Earlier this year, I had prepared a series of questions and answers regarding proposed revisions to the annual EEO-1 report that is submitted by employers throughout the nation. At that time, it was not clear when and whether these proposed revisions would be enacted. On September 29, 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that it has received approval from the federal Office of Management a...

The 2016 Industry Liaison Group (NILG) national conference was held August 2-5 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The conference included a broad cross-section of presentations featuring speakers from the public and private sectors. While the formal theme of the conference was “Soaring to New Heights in Compliance,” the underlying theme of the conference was the frustration that organizations are feeling be...

Several years ago, I wrote an article for The OFCCP Digest that focused on the inherent flaws in availability analyses. Since that time, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has released a myriad of new regulations and has undertaken countless new initiatives. Yet, many federal contractors and subcontractors remain focused on the placement goals that are...

Every month, the Department of Labor (DOL) releases a report concerning jobs that were added to the economy. The report released at the start of May 2016 indicated that approximately 160,000 jobs were added. Many articles about this report commented on the reduced level of hiring that occurred in April as compared to previous months, and focused on the fact that the U.S. has been experiencing strong hi...

On February 1, 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published a notice of its intent to modify the annual EEO-1 report to include compensation data. The proposed collection of compensation data by EEOC has some similarities to a proposal released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) in 2015. That proposal by OFCCP would have affected o...