Following up on an announcement in the form of an agency directive issued by the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) last November, and in an effort to provide fact-specific compliance assistance, OFCCP has issued its first informal “opinion letter.”
The letter addresses whether OFCCP has jurisdiction over postsecondary educational institutions that merely pass along financial assistance grants – specifically, Pell Grants – from the federal government to students, and concludes the answer is no.
Although the letter deals with a situation that may not be directly relevant to many employers, it does illustrate that OFCCP has now expanded its compliance assistance resources to include opinion letters, and we can anticipate more such letters in the future, some of which are likely to deal with topics that will be more broadly applicable.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.