The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) announced this week that it has no intention to “request, accept, or use” any of the EEO-1 “Component 2” wage and hours-worked data submitted by EEO-1 filers to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
According to the OFCCP’s Federal Register notice, the agency has evaluated the Component 2 tool and has determined that the data derived is simply “too broad to provide much utility” to OFCCP in its efforts to identify and correct unlawful pay discrimination by federal contractors subject to its jurisdiction.
Of particular note, OFCCP’s announcement states that because Component 2 data is collected in a highly aggregated format, it does not provide the type of detail that would enable OFCCP to compare the pay of similarly situated employees.
OFCCP’s announcement also signals that the agency will have no information to provide in the case of any Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the Component 2 data. In other words, to the extent that a party might try to get the data from OFCCP rather than the EEOC, which has already indicated it considers Component 2 pay data to be confidential, OFCCP is announcing that it won’t have any information to provide in response to such a request.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.