It looks like employers required to file EEO-1 reports won’t have to submit pay and hours-worked data beyond the deadline coming up September 30.
Source: create jobs 51 / shutterstock
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has published a notice in the Federal Register that it won’t renew its request for what’s being called Component 2 data as part of the EEO-1 reports certain employers are required to submit annually.
Private-sector employers with at least 100 employees and all federal contractors and subcontractors with at least 50 employees and at least one federal contract or subcontract worth at least $50,000 are required to file the annual EEO-1 report.
Since 1966, the report has required employers to report race/ethnicity, gender, and job category information about their workforce. This year’s deadline for that information was May 31.
September 30 Deadline Still in Effect
The new Component 2 requirement was added near the end of the Obama administration as a way to fight pay inequality. When the Trump administration took over, the Office of Management and Budget issued a stay to keep the new requirement from going into effect. Then in March 2019, a federal district judge ordered the stay lifted and in April set a deadline for employers to submit two years of Component 2 data by September 30, 2019. Those two years are 2017 and 2018.
The EEOC’s decision not to continue requiring the pay and hours-worked data does not affect the September 30 deadline. That’s when employers required to submit EEO-1 forms are to turn in the information for 2017 and 2018.
Since the EEOC has specifically said it’s not asking for a renewal of Component 2, “it looks like there will be no more Component 2 from this administration,” Nita Beecher, an attorney with Fortney & Scott, LLC in Washington, D.C., says.
Beecher says both the EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) still have an obligation to address pay discrimination, and both do that with investigations into allegations of pay discrimination and through compliance audits of federal contractors. Also, states have moved “very aggressively into regulating pay discrimination,” she says.
Advice to Employers
Beecher, coeditor of Federal Employment Law Insider, advises employers to conduct annual pay equality analyses under attorney-client privilege to ensure their pay systems don’t discriminate against women or minorities. Those analyses also should consider state law requirements.
Also, employers need to stay abreast of developments. Beecher says a congressional hearing is set for next week when EEOC Chair Janet Dhillon may be asked about Component 2 and what the agency is going to do to collect pay data.
Beecher adds that if a Democrat is elected president in 2020, employers may see a return of Component 2 or some other version of pay reporting on the federal level.
Tammy Binford writes and edits news alerts and newsletter articles on labor and employment law topics for BLR web and print publications.