ABC submitted comments on Jan. 5 to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) expressing their strong opposition to the proposed rule that would require government contractors to report summary data on employee compensation to the DOL. ABC urges the OFCCP to withdraw their proposal.

The proposed rule would affect federal contractors that have more than 100 employees, are required to file EEO-1 reports, and have a contract, subcontract, or purchase order from the federal government worth $50,000 or more and lasting at least 30 days.

ABC outlines three major reasons why the proposed rule should be withdrawn:

1. The proposed rule would not achieve OFCCP’s stated goal of more efficiently targeted enforcement or increased voluntary compliance among contractors: Under the proposed approach, the data collected would be skewed in such a way that the results would be unusable.
2. It creates unjustifiably high burdens on contractors: In order to report the correct data, which would provide zero benefit; many contractors would have to re-configure their systems in order to combine and integrate both pay data and demographic data. 
3. The Proposed Rule Lacks Sufficient Detail in several key areas: For example, contractors are not assured that their data would be protected; the proposed rule offers no indication that OFCCP understands the sensitivity of the data that it would require contractors to submit; and the OFCCP has not offered satisfactory assurances that it would protect contractors’ data from Freedom Of Information Act requests.

More information on ABC’s request to withdraw this proposed rule is available in ABC’s comments.