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Category: Agency Enforcement

New OFCCP Report Highlights FY 2022 Accomplishments of Agency’s Ombuds Service

The Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has published a report highlighting the activities and accomplishments of the agency’s Ombuds Service in fiscal year 2022. The report, OFCCP’s FY 2022 Ombuds Service Annual Report, suggests that this relatively new service is achieving its goal of facilitating “the fair and equitable resolution of specific types of concerns raised by...
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Category: Policies and Practices

Gov’t Seeks Information on Employee Monitoring and Surveillance Practices With Regulation in Mind

The Biden Administration is asking the public to provide information by June 15 about employers’ use of automated systems to monitor and manage employees. The government made its request for information (RFI) in anticipation of potential future regulations aimed at ensuring that such surveillance systems do not undermine workers’ rights, opportunities, access, health, or safety. The White House is interested...
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Category: Agency Enforcement

Biden Administration Issues “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights”

The Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Biden White House has published a white paper outlining five “principles” that should guide the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic decision-making tools that have “the potential to meaningfully impact [the] rights, opportunities, or access” of the American public at large. Although this so-called AI Bill of Rights...
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Category: Compliance Tools

Revise Model Self-ID Form Strengthens Confidentiality Disclaimer

The self-identification forms used by many employers in response to government demographic data reporting requirements typically contain a prominent disclosure that personal identifying data such as race, ethnicity, and sex will be kept confidential subject to certain conditions. For many years, we have made available to our employers a “model self-ID template” that contains a suggested confidentiality disclaimer. We are...
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Category: Immigration

DHS Urged To Adopt Permanent Remote I-9 Document Verification Policy

For the second time in a year, our affiliated non-profit association, the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC), has filed written comments with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a request for public input on whether the agency should make permanent its current temporary policy of allowing employers to remotely examine Form I-9 identity and work authorization...
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Category: Compliance Tools

EEOC Issues New “Know Your Rights” Poster

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission) has replaced its longstanding “EEO is the Law” poster with a new version, entitled “Know Your Rights.” The new poster makes several significant changes, including the addition of a “QR code” that when scanned directs a person to the EEOC’s webpage explaining how to file a charge of employment discrimination. Current EEOC...
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Category: Government Contracts

Making Your 503/VEVRAA AAPs “Available” To Remote Applicants and Employees

Longstanding regulations issued by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) implementing Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 503) and Section 4212 of the Vietnam-Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) require covered federal contractors to make their written 503/VEVRAA affirmative action programs (AAPs) available to employees and applicants upon request, and further require that the...
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Category: Labor Relations

NLRB Makes It Harder To Ban Wearing of Union Insignia in the Workplace

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), now under the majority control of Biden appointees and over the strong dissent of its two minority Republican members, has reversed a Trump-era ruling that made it easier for employers to restrict the apparel an employee can wear on the job, including the wearing of items that contain union logos or messaging,...
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Category: Government Contracts

OFCCP Launches Online Construction Contract Award Portal

The Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has officially launched a new online portal to serve as the preferred (albeit optional) means under which federal construction contractors comply with the current requirement to provide information to OFCCP regarding the award of certain federal construction subcontracts. The new Notification of Construction Contract Award Portal (NCAP) essentially is an...
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Category: COVID-19

11th Circuit Narrows Contractor Vax Rule Injunction, But Renewed Enforcement Is Questionable

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has rolled back a nationwide injunction issued last year by a federal trial court in Georgia that prevented the Biden Administration from implementing the President’s controversial Executive Order (E.O.) requiring federal contractors to ensure employees were vaccinated against COVID-19. Finding that the trial court went too far in issuing a nationwide...

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