Monday, September 14, 2020: ALERT! OFCCP Made Revisions to the New CSAL!
Little did anyone know when we reported last Monday that “The OFCCP’s Audit List has Many New Twists!” that there was yet another strange twist to come….an unannounced revision OFCCP published on its website almost immediately on the heels of releasing its original Corporate Scheduling Announcement List (CSAL)! We knew something was awry when Members reviewing the original CSAL almost immediately contacted us reporting that the CSAL was announcing audits of establishments still in audit or immune to audit at this time. So, if you happened to miss the news, we reported last Monday (Sept 14) that OFCCP had released the original List on the previous Friday (Sept 11), not to worry, as OFCCP quietly revised the list last Monday (Sept 14) making almost 100 changes.
The revisions only affected the Supply and Service List. Here’s what changed.
- The word “Focused” was dropped from the Accommodation, Promotion, and Section 503 Reviews to now refer to them as an “Accommodation Review,” a “Promotion Review” and a “Section 503 Review.”
- There were 79 changes to the types of Reviews some contractors were previously expecting from the original CSAL of two Fridays ago. However, the overall breakdown of the 6 types of audits OFCCP is announcing remains the same (see below).
- There were three changes to the name of a parent company or an establishment
- OFCCP added two new audit locations.
- OFCCP deleted two duplicate audit locations.
Editor’s Note: OFCCP’s decision to drop the word “Focused” from three of its six types of announced audits suggests that OFCCP’s intent is to use the existing OFCCP audit Scheduling Letter (for full-fledged “Compliance Reviews”) as the audit Scheduling Letter to initiate the coming new Accommodation Reviews, Promotion Reviews and Section 503 Reviews. While OFCCP does not have OMB (Office of Management and Budget) approved audit Scheduling Letters for these three new kinds of OFCCP audits, it appears that OFCCP believes that IF it has OMB authority to do the greater (a full-fledged A-Z Compliance Review of Executive Order 11246, Section 503 and VEVRAA issues), it can therefore do the lesser by simply not allocating any resources during these audits to anything but Accommodations, or Promotions or Section 503 issues. We have previously observed OMB take a different point of view from time-to-time and to insist upon a new review and approval of each unique and different type of letter (so as to properly measure an agency’s compliance with the several Paperwork Reduction Act requirements directing OMB, among others, to approve every writing a federal Executive Branch agency sends to ten or more members of the public). So, contractors will have to wait to see if OMB approves three new OFCCP audit Scheduling Letters (thus delaying OFCCP’s deployment of these three new forms of audit) or whether OMB will simply allow OFCCP to cut down in scope and use its existing approved (full Compliance Review) audit Scheduling Letter.
There are still 2,250 Reviews on the Supply & Service List, comprised of:
- 500 – Accommodation Reviews
- 500 – Promotion Reviews
- 500 – Compliance Checks
- 250 – 503 Focused Reviews
- 402 – Establishment Reviews
- 67 – CMCE (Corporate Management Compliance Evaluations)
- 31 – FAAPs (Functional Affirmative Action Programs)
Today: Monday September 21, 2020: OFCCP published a one-page notice on its website and pushed an e-mail to those who subscribe to OFCCP’s news releases reporting the changes it had quietly made to the CSAL last Monday (September 14). Fearing a breach of OFCCP Director Craig Leen’s transparency pledge to contractors, OFCCP now explains that:
“After the CSAL was published, it came to our attention that it was compiled from a draft version of the scheduling list that had not included a cap of five establishment reviews, excluding focused reviews and compliance checks. Once this error was identified, OFCCP published an updated CSAL based on the correct and final version of the scheduling list. This CSAL was published on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. OFCCP made no changes to the individual establishments included on the scheduling list. The error only impacted the type of review notated on the CSAL.”
OFCCP’s September 21 notice also clarifies a question we received from many Members and partners as to whether OFCCP’s self-imposed cap of “five establishment reviews” per company per CSAL counted “focused reviews” and “compliance checks” in the five-audit cap. OFCCP’s answer is “no”, so a company could have five establishment reviews (meaning full-fledged Compliance Reviews”) and could also have additional focused reviews and compliance checks…for a total of more than five OFCCP “instigations” of one type or another simultaneously underway.
Thank you to the FisherPhillips law firm for noticing the quiet change and for breaking this story last Wednesday and the National Industry Liaison group for crunching the details on Friday!