The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ (OFCCP) announced the new affirmative action requirements for veterans. These requirements significantly changed the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act or VEVRAA. VEVRRA prohibits employment discrimination against specific categories of veterans by federal government contractors and subcontractors. For the past 40 years
VEVRAA has required federal contractors and subcontractors to take affirmative action in recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting qualified veterans. However, the regulations never required covered contractors and subcontractors to conduct data analysis and set workforce goals or benchmarks, as they are required to do when undertaking affirmative action for women and minorities.
The new requirements now include:
Hiring Benchmarks – for protected veterans. Contractors may choose to either adopt a benchmark determined by the OFCCP that is based on the national percentage of veterans in the civilian labor force (currently 8%). Or, covered contractors may choose to set their own benchmarks, based on data derived from published reports issued by a variety of federal agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service. The final rule does not require contractors to apply their hiring benchmark to individual job groups, only to the workforce as a whole, by AAP establishment.
Data Collection – requires contractors to undertake new data collection activities in order to bolster and improve upon the data available regarding veterans and employment. Contractors now have to document and update annually certain comparisons and information regarding applicants and employees to include the following:
- The number of protected veteran applicants;
- The total number of job openings and the number of jobs filled; and
- The total number of applicants for all jobs.
- The total number of protected veteran applicants hired; and
- The total number of applicants hired.
Self-Identification – applicants must be invited to self-identify as protected veterans at both the pre-offer and post-offer stages of the application process. For pre-offer identification, the final rule permits contractors to invite applicants to self-identify as a “protected veteran” at the same time that the contractor collects demographic data regarding race, gender, and ethnicity from applicants as required by Executive Order 11246.
Data Assessment – To determine whether the contractor’s outreach and recruitment efforts have been successful, the final rule requires that contractors annually assess their efforts and document this evaluation. The evaluation must include the criteria the contractor used to evaluate the effectiveness of each effort and the contractor´s conclusion as to whether each effort was effective. Contractors must retain their evaluations for 3 years, to allow them to assess the success of their efforts for veterans over time.
Reference: Vets’ Affirmative Action Deadline—March 24, 2014, Attorney Susan Schoenfeld’s, BLR HR Daily Newsletter, 11/11/2013
