Friends: This is my second column for Local JobNetwork™ discussing OFCCP developments. I appreciate the overwhelmingly generous response to my first column.
This month, I want to discuss why OFCCP’s audits of the compensation federal contractors pay to their employees and of federal contractor compensation systems are very different from OFCCP audits in which OFCCP alleges only a failure of “Affirmative Action” or an unlawful “failure-to-hire” (typically blue-collar unskilled entry-level laborers). The single difference I will identify below, as simple as it is, leads, however, to a totally different mindset among defending federal contractors. This single difference also exposes two unique problems with which federal contractors have to specially grapple in compensation cases. Unfortunately, too, this difference “raises the stakes” for most federal contractors in a way which will force most contractors OFCCP accuses of unlawful compensation discrimination into uncomfortable, but necessary, confrontations with OFCCP. And, OFCCP is learning that compensation audits in which OFCCP alleges unlawful compensation discrimination are suddenly almost always hard fought scrimmages as to which it is not going to be a rollick in the park…
THIS COLUMN IS MEANT TO ASSIST IN A GENERAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CURRENT LAW AND PRACTICE RELATING TO OFCCP. IT IS NOT TO BE REGARDED AS LEGAL ADVICE. COMPANIES OR INDIVIDUALS WITH PARTICULAR QUESTIONS SHOULD SEEK ADVICE OF COUNSEL.