In a closely watched formal enforcement action brought by the Labor Department’s (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) against the Oracle Corporation, a DOL Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) has ruled that OFCCP failed to prove that alleged compensation disparities impacting female and minority employees were either the result of intentional race and sex discrimination, the result of “steering” discrimination, or were due to the company’s compensation policy.
The Recommended Decision and Order (RDO) by ALJ Richard M. Clark in OFCCP v. Oracle America, Inc., 2017-OFC-00006 (ALJ September 22, 2020), rejects OFCCP’s statistical analysis, noting that the agency failed to account for factors that the company actually used in setting compensation. The RDO also casts doubt on OFCCP’s purported anecdotal evidence of discrimination against female and minority employees, referring to it as failing “to bring the statistics to life” and not supporting OFCCP’s claims of “widespread” intentional discrimination.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.