Affirmative Action - Penalty

March22Collector

Hello. Could someone fill me in on some info here please? Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place, but I can't find much info on the following: What is the penalty for NOT creating an affirmative action program when you do have over 50 employees and a governmental contract over $50,000? I realize the OFCCP is the enforcer here, but I'm not sure of the process and penalties...Any help would be great. Thank you. Eric

Margaret Morford

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-01-03 AT 09:28AM (CST)[/font][br][br]The big penalty is that they will jerk your government contracts. They can fine you (They decide the amount of the fine, usually pegged to the value of the contract.) and will make your life miserable with inspections. Do not run "naked" on this one. The days of dropping below the radar screen with the OFCCP are over thanks to the computer age. You can outsource the writing of your AAP's and many people do because it's such a hassle. I have someone that does this for some of my clients. She does this almost full-time because of the outsourcing demand. Call me if you'd like to know more about her.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

Dutch2

I suggest that you go to the trouble and some expense of doing it right the first time. I work at a bank and therefore we must have an AAP. We have had one for years, updated as needed and it has always cleared any and all exams and/or reviews that we have had. However in the fall of 2002 we were blessed by the DOL and selected for an random Compliance Review of our Affirmative Aciton Plan. This has been on going for over a year now and it is still not put to bed. Just having a plan will not satisfy them, DOL, you will have to provide many, many, many list of employees, current and former, all applicants that have applied for work and what job they requested, a list of everyone that has left employment and why they left, all promotions, all demotions and a list of all employees that applied for the promotions and why you selected the ones you did over the others; all of these by gender, race, EEOC code, job titles, etc. You will be expected to know the gender and race of each all of your applicants, this was just not possible for us. We are not a huge bank and we do not have an HR system that we can just push a button and all this data comes back. We had to gather it all by hand. There is no telling how many hours, days, maybe weeks we have dedicted to this compliance review over the past, nearly 18 months. Then when you complete your research and send them the data they requested, I can just about promise you that it will not be in the format that they require, so you get to do it all over again. We finally hired a law firm our of St. Louis that specializes in labor law to help us as this was way beyond the ability of our local attorneys. I hopefully sent the final list to them this morning. For the DOL to finally bless our Plan and how we have implemented same would be the best Christmas present I could receive.

Don D

The sad thing is that all of this material is just sitting there in some government worker's cubicle gathering dust. They don't have the staff, expertise or desire to sift through all of that material and analyze it in the first place.

Dutch2

I do believe that you just hit the nail smack-dap on the head. If something appeared out of line in regards to AAP, as the employer, we still have the right to hire the most qualified person for the job regardless of their gender, race, etc...
If nothing else, as our President told me this morning, it has been job security for me. I wonder what he meant by "has been"?
Keep the faith all you HR folks,
Dutch2

March22Collector

Thanks for all the info. I've contacted our attorney and we're in the process of gathering the information needed to begin an AAP. Looks like it is going to take a lot of time to implement! Thanks again x:-)