OFCCP Director announces aggressive strategic plan and “a new day at the OFCCP”

Lexology.com
Seyfarth Shaw LLP
USA April 8 2010

Late last week Patricia A. Shiu, Director, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued a draft Strategic Plan for the agency (available here) and followed it up this week with a live Web chat. Introducing the topic of increased enforcement activities at the agency, Director Shiu advised contractors to:
Be proactive by evaluating your workforce by gender, race, national origin, religion, ethnicity, disability and veteran status; examine who is being hired, promoted, and terminated; look closely at wages for similarly situated jobs; and develop a culture where equal opportunity and diversity is valued.
In the April 5, 2010 Web chat , Director Shiu claimed she would provide greater transparency and invited comments about the Strategic Plan saying, “ [I]t's a new day at the OFCCP, and I am ready for your feedback on our proposed goals and outcomes.” Contractors should be aware of the OFCCP’s Strategic Plan as it is quite clear that the burden to demonstrate compliance will be greater than ever before.
The OFCCP’s Strategic Goals
The OFCCP’s plan, which lays out its strategic direction through fiscal year 2016, is centered specifically on two of the DOL’s strategic goals. The first goal is: Prepare workers for good jobs and ensure fair compensation. To do so, the OFCCP’s outcome goals are:
Increase workers’ incomes and narrow wage and income inequality; and
Help workers who are in low-wage jobs or out of the labor market find a path into middle class jobs.
These outcome goals clearly signal that an increased focus on pay equity is on the horizon for federal contractors. While the OFCCP regulations have required contractors to conduct self-audits of their compensation for a number of years, the agency’s enforcement of the regulations in the audits it conducts has been uneven. With the Obama Administration’s consistent message that it will aggressively seek to eliminate gender and race pay gaps for the same or similar jobs, contractors should get serious about conducting meaningful pay analysis and implementing pay adjustments where pay disparities are not justified by legitimate, job-related reasons.

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