Posted on 03/16/2020 5:11:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the past, when federal contractors complained about the treatment they received from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, agency officials would dare them to take it to the judge because “he works for us.”
But Google took the dare – it took a complaint about harassment by the agency over alleged employee discrimination to an administrative law judge who works for the agency. And the judge agreed Google was right.
Google said it turned over 740,000 pages of documents, at a cost of 2,300 man hours and $500,000, to address an inquiry by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs into Google’s compensation practices. When the office came back and added to its demands the names of all Google employees, the company said enough.
Google sued, and an administrative judge from the Department of Labor ruled the agency had been “overbroad, intrusive on employee privacy, unduly burdensome, and insufficiently focused on obtaining the requested information.”
Of course, it took a company with the clout and wherewithal of Google to press the case. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has the power to debar federal contractors, which prevents them from doing future business with the federal government. This can be a death sentence to many businesses, which means those of lesser means than Google – which is well north of 99 percent of every company on the planet – have no choice but to accept mistreatment and move on.
And there has been plenty of such mistreatment – an agency focus on high-dollar settlements with top companies to secure splashy headlines, frequent and systemic antagonistic behavior toward the firms it regulates, given to making extraordinary and overly broad demands for information then insisting near-impossible deadlines be met to produce it.
That the Department of Labor ruled in favor of Google is a sign the agency finally may be getting the message that its conduct is not proper or productive. Its mission is to ensure federal contractors follow federal employment law – that they do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity, nor differentiate in pay by gender or in any other discriminatory manner.
But in the final years of the Obama administration, the agency had focused on high-dollar verdicts and headlines. It fined Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies $10 million and $7 million respectively and fined Bank of America $4.2 million. These verdicts struck such fear into American businesses that many were reluctant to talk even anonymously to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for a white paper it produced on the agency’s problems.
In the deregulatory age of President Trump, American companies ought not fear their regulators.
Perhaps sensing the climate would change when President Trump took office, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs decided to go big-time with its harassment efforts in the waning days of the Obama administration. The agency filed suits against Google, Oracle and Palantir, which provides software and data analysis to the federal government.
For instance, if a job requires expertise in finance, someone with a business or finance degree likely would earn more starting out than someone with a degree in history. But if these employees had the same title but were not paid the same, the office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs would consider this discriminatory and subject to fines and sanctions.
The Chamber and others say these lawsuits reflect the priorities of the previous administration, not the current one, and should be dropped. Alex Acosta, President Trump’s first secretary of labor, declined to do so during his term, and it is hoped his successor, Eugene Scalia, will be more forceful on the matter.
It also is hoped by the Chamber and many of its members who are federal contractors – that the agency will return to its core purpose, working with contractors and subcontractors to foster true affirmative action, and reduce emphasis on punitive and seemingly politically motivated prosecutions.
What is clear is the people in charge of advancing the president’s deregulatory program should spend some time on fixing this agency and erasing the midnight mischief of the previous administration.
This is why it is dangerous to give power to government. It will ALWAYS be abused.
some of the regulation enforcement agencies I have known way back in my productive years were like the gestapo. OSHA was one of them. They wouldn’t even tell what regulation you violated, they fined you. When Reagon came into office he ordered OSHA to open their compliance academy to opened to private industry safety officers to help cope.
I work for an Israeli military contractor that also supplies technology to US law enforcement. We have secret tech that we are not keen to give away to other countries but also to competitors — eg Lockheed or whomever.
Through experience, we’ve learned to have a compartmentalized corporate structure bc this agency not only will abuse us for being Israeli (happens under Obama) but will issue demands for information that are clearly just legalized corporate espionage on behalf of whatever contractor gave someone a bribe to try to make our tech an open government doc.
It’s so bad we’ve declined contracts so the USA had to get inferior (and more expensive) products.
Except for discrimination against whites.
That's "good" discrimination.
And discrimination against men.
That's "good" sexism.
....and for that you can blame AT&T and the Nixon DoJ.
AT&T, the largest private employer in the free world at the time, signed a letter of agreement with the DoJ to implement Affirmative Action in exchange for respite from an anti-trust suit the DoJ was pursuing. Once Ma Bell was on board, the rest of corporate America would follow suit......and it did.
Someone posted a very good link recently about how the "Civil Rights" legislation basically destroyed our Constitution.
Equal Protection Under the Law, Freedom of Association, and Freedom of Thought no longer exist in America.
There are basically two Constitutions: the real one, that Federal and State agencies, the courts, and government ignore, and the "Civil Rights" fake constitution, which is what we operate under today.
I believe the gist of this article is based in this statement:
“It also is hoped by the Chamber and many of its members who are federal contractors – that the agency will return to its core purpose, working with contractors and subcontractors to foster true affirmative action, and reduce emphasis on punitive and seemingly politically motivated prosecutions.”
Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs was created in 1978 with Executive Order 12086 by President Jimmy Carter through a consolidation of all the Affirmative Action enforcement responsibilities at each federal agency with Executive Order 11246 to the United States Secretary of Labor. The origins of the agency trace back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II when he signed Executive Order 8802, preventing discrimination based on race by government contractors.
The entire process for this agency, which has been in existence for almost a century, is nothing but politically motivated. And it is for the oversight of affirmative action along with equal employment opportunity. But until the problems created by lack of oversight of private business, some done intentionally and accomplished even in the time of over site, there is no ruling faction or no resolving agency to help create an atmosphere of trust concerning this problem of discrimination we have in this country by too many people. So way too many times, some people get away with it and others are blamed for the appearance of it. And all these court actions are not in existence because the agency over stepped their position. They are the accumulation of the failure of business to do the right thing in the face of discovery and fighting it for their opportunity to violate the law..
I clicked the site for the “report” from the COC, and the requested page “/report/ofccp-right-mission-wrong-tactics-recommendations-reform)” could not be found.
But statements within the article like this indicate their biased or question ability:
“Perhaps sensing the climate would change when President Trump took office, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs decided to go big-time with its harassment efforts in the waning days of the Obama administration.”
Perhap?? This now becomes a witch hunt if it was up to the writer, Brian McNicoll, who is a sky is falling writer giving out just enough information to sell his work. Maybe he is the one that needs to be educated in the real world.
rwood
This agency needs to be disbanded.
Re: This agency needs to be disbanded
Any agency created by an Executive Order can be terminated by an Executive Order.
“This agency needs to be disbanded.”
Can be done, but where is any over site for social and business problems going to be corrected. It will give business an open hand to do anything they want and the brunt of it will come to the employees and not the employers. It will close the doors on any discussion of racial problems which is the cornerstone of reason for movements like the bloods and crips who have around 50 active sub groups scattered around the country between them. There are four major active gangs from the Caribbean. Over 30 white gangs, 29 Asian, 13 Eastern European, over 60 Hispanic, 50+ Italian, 5+ Jewish, and an assorted other groups that could break out in violence if there is no ruling faction to handle the problems and try to deflect them. You thought Watts was bad, or St. Louis, or Chicago right now, they were in the minors. This many groups choosing up sides can get a whole lot of innocent people killed. Don’t let the ramblings of a radical writer influence you with only his half of the information. And there’s nothing to say his is even right.
rwood
A body dumped in the Potomac won't spend a lot of time getting to the Atlantic. Y'know, theoretically.
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