The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the research and investigatory arm of Congress, has released a new report examining the enforcement and compliance assistance activities of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
The GAO’s report, “Strengthening Oversight Could Improve Federal Contractor Nondiscrimination Compliance,” was requested by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., chairman of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, both of whom have been critical of OFCCP.
GAO identifies specific areas where OFCCP can improve its efforts and makes six recommendations regarding changes to OFCCP’s audit selection and distribution system, contractor and worker outreach and assistance, and monitoring contractor compliance. The report also contains a detailed response from OFCCP Director Patricia Shiu, in which she generally agrees with the GAO’s findings and discusses several initiatives already underway that she claims are in line with GAO’s recommendations.
Reps. Kline and Walberg also issued a response to the report urging OFCCP to “heed these nonpartisan recommendations to improve compliance assistance and better target its enforcement efforts.”
Federal contractors hoping for a more scathing analysis of OFCCP’s enforcement efforts are likely to be disappointed by the GAO report, which despite presenting some interesting enforcement data previously unreleased by OFCCP, does not really delve very deeply into how OFCCP operates nor call for any major changes to current agency practices.
A copy of the GAO’s 56-page report is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.