During the three months since we issued our last update of financial settlements of discrimination allegations brought by the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) against federal contractors, the agency has posted six new financial settlements to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Library, including a relatively rare settlement stemming from an individual complaint investigation alleging a pay transparency violation.
Of the remaining five settlements posted, four involved alleged hiring disparities, and one involved alleged compensation disparities. Unlike our last few financial settlement updates, all six of the settlements summarized below involved standard conciliation agreements (CAs). Although three of them did settle prior to OFCCP issuing any formal findings of noncompliance through a Notice of Violation (NOV) or a Predetermination Notice (PDN), there were no “Early Resolution Conciliation Agreements (ERCAs),” which we were seeing more and more often during the latter part of the Trump-era OFCCP. There has been no indication from the Biden OFCCP that it is doing away with ERCAs, but the fact that none have been posted recently is worth noting.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.