What is the likelihood of having a conciliation agreement at the end of an OFCCP compliance review? Does this vary by region? Being well into FY2014, it is time to begin wading through OFCCP’s enforcement activity of FY2013 to identify recent trends. Through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request process, the Center for Corporate Equality (CCE) annually requests the conciliation agreements and consent decrees resulting from OFCCP compliance reviews for the purpose of summarizing enforcement activity. Unfortunately, settlement-level enforcement data for FY2013 have not been provided to CCE yet. However, OFCCP did submit a summary table of FY 2013 data to CCE as a preview. Given no settlement-level data, this FOIA summary and the US Department of Labor’s publicly available enforcement database provide us the most comprehensive overview of FY2013 OFCCP enforcement activity for the time being.
According to our DOL enforcement database search results, during FY2013 a total of 4,102 compliance evaluations of federal contractor establishments were conducted by OFCCP, resulting in 1,137 remedial actions resulting in a conciliation agreement, consent decree, or financial remedy. Below is a table presenting enforcement data by region, as pulled from the DOL enforcement database and the summary information obtained by CCE through FOIA request.
|
OFCCP Region |
# of Compliance Reviews |
Total # of Conciliation Agreements (CAs) |
|||
|
Database |
CCE FOIA Summary |
Public Database |
|||
|
(N) |
(n) |
(% of total reviews) |
(n) |
(% of total reviews) |
|
| Northeast |
475 |
159 |
33.47% |
162 |
34.11% |
| Mid-Atlantic |
535 |
175 |
32.71% |
172 |
32.15% |
| Southeast |
810 |
261 |
32.22% |
261 |
32.22% |
| Midwest |
944 |
196 |
20.76% |
198 |
20.97% |
| SWARM |
606 |
80 |
13.20% |
82 |
13.53% |
| Pacific |
732 |
259 |
35.38% |
260 |
35.52% |
| FAAP |
Unknown |
3 |
Unknown |
Unknown |
Unknown |
|
|
|||||
| Totals |
4102 |
1133 |
27.62% |
1137 |
27.71% |
FOIA = information obtained from the DOL through a FOIA request; Database = information obtained from the DOL enforcement database
According to the above data, Pacific region audits had the highest likelihood of ending a compliance review with a conciliation agreement, and SWARM region audits had the lowest likelihood. The DOL enforcement database does not report FAAP-related enforcement and OFCCP does not release the number of FAAP reviews they conduct, leaving contractors with a murky understanding of FAAP compliance reviews. What we do know (from the FOIA request summary numbers) is that only 3 conciliation agreements resulted from FAAP-based reviews. It seems that OFCCP has still not found a foothold in FAAP enforcement. When the settlement-level data arrive to the CCE, we can expect a better understanding of what types of violations were found in FY2013 FAAPs.
More details to come through the annual CCE enforcement summary report. Stay tuned.
By Jana Garman, M.A., Consultant, and David Cohen, M.S., President, DCI Consulting Group