On April 1, AGC submitted comments to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opposing its proposal to revise the Employer Information Report (EEO-1). The proposal intends to collect compensation and hours-worked data, in addition to already collected race and gender data, from all employers with 100 or more employees. Prime and first-tier subcontractors who perform work directly for the federal government and have 50 or more employees would be required to submit the currently used EEO-1 report that does not include compensation and hours-worked data. Employers with fewer than 100 employees, second-tier and lower federal subcontractors with fewer than 100 employees, all federally-assisted contractors with fewer than 100 employees, and prime and first-tier subcontractors with fewer than 50 employees will not be required to complete either version of the EEO-1 report.
The proposal to revise the report references wage discrimination as the basis for the need to collect compensation data from employers. AGC’s comments explain to the Commission that collecting wage data are not necessary. Specifically, AGC shows through data collected by the Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP) that there is no need for the eradication of wage discrimination in construction because there is no evidence that such discrimination exists. The Commission’s charge data from 2013 reveal that just 1.05 percent of the total number of equal pay claims were identified as from the construction industry. Additionally, of the 4,007 audits conducted by OFCCP in 2012, pay discrimination occurred against women in only 0.03 percent of all the facilities audited. AGC also addressed other reasons why the collection of wage data are unnecessary including explanations that:
- Better suited tools already exist to assist with compensation benchmarking;
- National wage data are useless for benchmarking purposes in construction; and
- Government analysis will not account for a wide variety of factors used to determine compensation.
Regarding the collection of hours-worked data, the proposal did not provide an example of what the collection of information would look like on the revised form. As a result, AGC’s comments ask the EEOC to withdraw consideration of this requirement until it can provide an example that can be evaluated by employers for public comment.
While AGC’s comments stress that these data are not needed, in an effort to mitigate the burdensome impact the proposed changes would have on its members, AGC urged the EEOC to consider the following should the revisions be unnecessarily implemented:
- Understand that aggregate data are not useful or transparent, yet transparent data place employers’ proprietary information at risk
- Change the EEO-1 Reporting Date to Allow for Post-Annual Reporting
- Clearly Define “Contractor” on the Revised EEO-1 Form
- Take All Measures to Ensure Confidentiality Prior to the Release of a Revised EEO-1 Report
For more information on the proposal, click here. Visit the EEOC website to see the sample revised form. AGC will continue to monitor the developments of the proposal and will keep members informed.