These are unprecedented times. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to rethink, retool, recalibrate and reconsider our options – all for the sake of keeping us safe. Let’s consider some of the equal employment opportunity (EEO) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) considerations. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued guidelines for emp...

As federal contractors, academic institutions are responsible for abiding by the regulations enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which include taking affirmative action with respect to employment. The additional challenge for academic institutions is implementation of affirmative action in admissions. This is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Ri...

The Dilemma When we ask our employees to voluntarily report their race, ethnicity, and gender, we will almost always end up with a small proportion of the population who choose not to provide such demographic information. There are any number of reasons for this. For a growing percentage of the population, the binary options of male or female do not resonate with them. And while the race categories now include “two o...

During the last several weeks, OFCCP has been conducting a series of Listening Sessions to collect information for incorporation into a soon-to-be-released Academic Technical Assistance Guide (TAG). This TAG will serve as a resource for academic institutions who are federal contractors. It's long overdue, and academia is anxious to see which issues the TAG does, and does not, address. Background When I establish...

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) adopted the Darden 1 factors in 2014, to assist federal contractors in determining whether certain types of employees should be included in a federal contractor's Affirmative Action Plan. While these factors do shed some light on determining whether someone is an employee or a contractor, it has limited application for positions held by students at academic in...

Happy New Year! It’s time for that annual ritual of making New Year’s resolutions – both personal and professional. I won’t presume to suggest what your personal resolutions should be, but I offer the following New Year’s resolutions for a successful year in your profession. Note that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued guidelines regarding when and how to ask...

The White House has proposed merging the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), purportedly to reduce redundancies in civil rights enforcement. Some prominent members of the federal contracting compliance community think the proposal is DOA (Dead On Arrival) due to opposition from the civil rights community, federal contractor coalitions, and key in...

Do you have a drug-free workplace policy in place? Until 2010, the Department of Labor (DOL) enforced the drug-free workplace program, under the authority of the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988. This statute requires federal contractors with contracts of at least $100,000 and all federal grantees to agree that they will provide drug-free workplaces as a precondition of receiving a contract or grant from a federal agency. Th...

Have you ever wondered how the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) determines which contractors will receive a scheduling letter? There are two parts to the process: 1) developing the list and 2) selecting contractors from the list. This article outlines the standard process for scheduling contractors, the additional situations that could subject a federal contractor to a compliance review, and the except...

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in a decision on August 23, 2016, regarding Columbia University, concluded that, for the purposes of collective bargaining, the following positions should be deemed employees: Graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants Graduate research assistants Graduate fellows assistants Work-study students Instructional officers This ruling overturns Brown Universit...