In a somewhat unexpected ruling, a Department of Labor administrative law judge (ALJ) has issued an order denying the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ (OFCCP) motion for summary judgment in the agency’s formal access-to-records dispute with Google, Inc. OFCCP had filed a “denial of access” complaint against the company, accusing it of refusing to produce extensive compensation data records demanded by the agency as part of a compliance evaluation.
While the ALJ’s ruling in OFCCP v. Google is not a merits determination — the dispute is currently scheduled for a formal hearing before the ALJ on April 7, 2017 — the ruling makes clear that the ALJ believes that OFCCP’s requests for voluminous compensation data, including up to 19 years of salary history data for 20,000 employees, are unreasonable and unduly burdensome.
Although it is too soon to tell what broader impact, if any, the ALJ’s ruling will have on current and future OFCCP compliance evaluations, the ruling nonetheless may offer some relief to those contractors facing seemingly endless blanket requests for data and information that are not tailored to the specific compliance requirement(s) the agency believes the contractor violated.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.