Workforce Bulletin

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday: This week, we’re taking a look at the Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) new white-collar overtime exemption and worker classification rules and the U.S. government’s updated race and ethnicity categorizations.

As we reported in the first installment of our series on pay transparency, pay equity legislation continues to trend nationwide. While Part I focused on salary range disclosure legislation, in Part II, we highlight mandatory pay data reporting requirements that are being considered in Massachusetts.

What is Mandatory Pay Data Reporting?

Pay data reporting laws require covered employers to submit detailed compensation data reports, often broken down by race and gender, to state-designated agencies. To date, California and Illinois have adopted such laws. Under California law ...

As we previously reported, the US Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) announced back in August 2022, that it had received a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request from the Center for Investigative Reporting (“CIR”), for any and all Type 2 Consolidated EEO-1 Reports for 2016-2020 (“Consolidated Reports”) filed by federal contractors (“Covered Contractors”).  In response to the request, OFCCP has provided Covered Contractors with the opportunity to object to the release of the Reports and on February 15 extended the deadline for objections to March 3, 2023.  

The California legislature has presented S.B. 1162 (“the Bill”) to Governor Gavin Newsom. If the Governor signs the Bill into law, California will follow the lead of jurisdictions like Colorado and New York City by requiring many employers to include pay scales in job postings. The Bill would also impose pay equity reporting requirements, not just on large employers obligated to do so under federal law, but on any private employer with 100 or more employees, including those whose “employees” are hired through labor contractors. Those reports will also have to include breakdowns of aggregate data not previously collected.

On August 18, the US Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) announced that it had received a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request from the Center for Investigative Reporting (“CIR”), for all Type 2 Consolidated EEO-1 Reports filed by federal contractors from 2016-2020 (“Covered Contractors”) and that OFCCP has reason to believe that the information requested may be protected from disclosure under FOIA Exemption 4, which protects disclosure of confidential commercial or financial information and trade secrets. Accordingly, OFCCP has provided Covered Contractors with 30 days, i.e., until September 19, 2022, to submit written objections to the public release of their Type 2 EEO-1 Reports.

[UPDATE: As of September 15, 2022, the deadline to submit objections is extended to October 19, 2022.]

CIR’s FOIA request asks for a spreadsheet of all consolidated Type 2 EEO-1 reports for all federal contractors, including “first-tier subcontractors,” i.e., subcontractors that contracted directly with a prime federal contractor. Type 2 EEO-1 reports are one of several different types of reports that multi-establishment employers must file annually, which consist of a consolidated report of demographic data for all employees at headquarters as well as all establishments, categorized by race/ethnicity, sex, and job category.

In a flurry of activity into the wee hours of June 2, 2021, Illinois legislators concluded a spring session that saw the passage of numerous measures that will affect employers in the state across the span of the employment relationship. Among the most significant of the many bills heading to Governor Pritzker for signature are acts amending the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Victims’ Economic Security and Safety Act (“VESSA”), and the Freedom to Work Act. It is expected that Governor Pritzker will sign all of the above-mentioned bills.

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday:  This week, some practical updates on posting requirements, reporting deadlines, and new COVID-19 leave in California.

Video: YouTube, Vimeo.

On March 12, 2021, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that the EEO-1 Component 1 data collection period will open at the end of April 2021 and close in July 2021.  Submission of the EEO-1 Report is required for employers with 100 or more employees, and applicable Federal government contractors with 50 or more employees and contracts of $50,000. The agency has not announced an exact closing date, indicating:

The EEO-1 Component 1 data collection will open at the end of April 2021 and close in July 2021. The exact closing date will be posted when the data collection ...

On December 2, 2020, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) announced a new interactive data search and mapping tool, named “EEOC Explore,” which permits users to access “the most current, granular, and privacy protected aggregate EEO-1 data publicly available,” covering over 56 million employees and 73,000 employers across the United States. According to the agency, EEOC Explore “enables stakeholders to explore and compare data trends across a number of categories, including location, sex, race and ethnicity, and industry sector without the ...

On May 7, 2020, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) announced that it was delaying the collection of 2019 EEO-1 demographic data until 2021 because of the COVID-19 public health emergency.  Accordingly, the EEOC’s online filing portal for 2019 EEO-1 filings will remain closed for now.

Recognizing the substantial impact the public health emergency is having on businesses across the country, the EEOC determined that delaying collections would put employers in a better position to provide accurate data. It expects to begin collecting 2019 EEO-1 data along ...

In a stinging rebuke of the Trump Administration’s attempt to remove burdensome regulations on employers, Judge Tanya Chutkan, a District Court judge in the District of Columbia this week reinstated the EEO-1 “Part 2” wage data/hours worked reporting form for all employers who file annual EEO-1 demographic reports with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") and the U.S. Department of Labor. (This includes all companies employing more than 100 people, or 50 people if they are a US federal contractor.)

This new data collection requirement, launched in 2016 by ...

On February 1, 2019, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") announced that the agency is giving employers two additional months to file their EEO-1 workforce data surveys, extending the deadline from March 31, 2019 to May 31, 2019. The extension comes as a result of the EEOC’s partial lapse in appropriations and closure during the recent shutdown of the federal government. According to the EEOC website, detailed instructions for submission of EEO-1 data will be forthcoming.

Each year, the EEOC requires private employers who are subject to Title VII with 100 or ...

With the release of President Obama’s budget for the DOL on February 9, 2016, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP") announced two top enforcement priorities for 2016. First, the OFCCP will continue to identify and address systemic pay discrimination in its efforts to reduce the gender and race-based pay gap.  Second, the OFCCP will establish regional centers staffed with “highly skilled and specialized compliance officers” to conduct “large, complex compliance evaluations” in specific industries, including the financial services ...