Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) posted information on its website alerting contractors that they are no longer required to invite applicants to self-identify with a particular category of protected veterans post-offer. The posting came in the form of an update to its Frequently Asked Questions page regarding the regulations set to enforce the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA). The regulations went into effect in March of 2014.
In a Jan. 20 announcement, OFCCP stated that the decision to eliminate this requirement came in response to contractor inquiries after the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS) replaced the VETS-100A form with a new VETS-4212 form. (For background on the VETS action, click here.) As a result, OFCCP indicates in the FAQs that “since the new VETS-4212 report no longer requires contractors to provide [post-offer self-identification] information by the individual protected veteran categories, contractors are [no longer] required to invite self-identification by category in order to comply with VEVRAA’s post-offer invitation requirement. Rather, contractors need only invite those offered a job to indicate whether they are protected veterans under any of the VEVRAA categories.”
Additionally, OFCCP clarifies that while contractors are no longer required to invite veteran self-identification by protected veteran categories, contractors may choose to continue to invite applicants to voluntarily self-identify the specific category or categories of protected veteran to which they belong at the post-offer stage, so long as the contractor also provides VETS with the aggregate protected veteran data required by the new VETS-4212 form.
For more information on OFCCP’s VEVRAA regulations, click here, here, and here.