Workforce Bulletin

As we previously reported, the US Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) announced back in August 2022, that it had received a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request from the Center for Investigative Reporting (“CIR”), for any and all Type 2 Consolidated EEO-1 Reports for 2016-2020 (“Consolidated Reports”) filed by federal contractors (“Covered Contractors”).  In response to the request, OFCCP has provided Covered Contractors with the opportunity to object to the release of the Reports and on February 15 extended the deadline for objections to March 3, 2023.  

On August 18, the US Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) announced that it had received a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request from the Center for Investigative Reporting (“CIR”), for all Type 2 Consolidated EEO-1 Reports filed by federal contractors from 2016-2020 (“Covered Contractors”) and that OFCCP has reason to believe that the information requested may be protected from disclosure under FOIA Exemption 4, which protects disclosure of confidential commercial or financial information and trade secrets. Accordingly, OFCCP has provided Covered Contractors with 30 days, i.e., until September 19, 2022, to submit written objections to the public release of their Type 2 EEO-1 Reports.

[UPDATE: As of September 15, 2022, the deadline to submit objections is extended to October 19, 2022.]

CIR’s FOIA request asks for a spreadsheet of all consolidated Type 2 EEO-1 reports for all federal contractors, including “first-tier subcontractors,” i.e., subcontractors that contracted directly with a prime federal contractor. Type 2 EEO-1 reports are one of several different types of reports that multi-establishment employers must file annually, which consist of a consolidated report of demographic data for all employees at headquarters as well as all establishments, categorized by race/ethnicity, sex, and job category.

On February 23, 2017 the National Labor Relations Board (“Board” or “NLRB”) made public a proposed Final Rule to revise its Rules and Regulations “ (the “Rules”)  to reflect modern technology, such as E-Filing, and eliminate references to telegraphs, carbon copies, and the requirements for hard copy submissions and multiple copies, and to eliminate legalistic terms” from the Rules.

Because the Board contends these amendments to its Rules as “procedural rather than substantive,” it has taken the position that it is not obligated to allow for comment before the ...

By: Stuart M. Gerson

On May 16, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Schindler Elevator Corp. v. United States ex rel. Kirk (pdf), holding that the public disclosure bar of the False Claims Act (FCA) is triggered by a federal agency’s written response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. This important, and much awaited, decision makes it clear that an agency’s FOIA response constitutes a “report” for purposes of the FCA’s public disclosure bar, which forecloses private parties from bringing qui tam whistleblower suits to recover falsely or ...