On February 1, 2018, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) mailed 1,000 corporate scheduling announcement letters (CSALs) to federal contractors and subcontractors. CSALs are sent to service and supply contractors to provide them with advance notice that they may be selected for an OFCCP compliance review.
CSALs are courtesy notices; they are not required by law. A contractor may be scheduled for a compliance review even if it did not receive a CSAL. Further, if a contractor receives a CSAL for one location, it may still be subject to a compliance review at another location. Notably, CSALs are not sent to contractors with functional affirmative action programs.
OFCCP has announced that compliance reviews (audits) from the CSAL list will be mailed starting March 19, 2018. These letters may be addressed to the company's human resources department or the office of the chief executive; the audit scheduling letters require a response to OFCCP within 30 days of receipt. In a departure from previous practice, OFCCP will not audit any establishment at which a prior OFCCP review closed within the last 5 years and the agency promises to audit no more than 10 establishments per contractor in this current scheduling cycle.
Contractors that receive CSALs want to take particular care to verify their affirmative action programs are up to date and fully compliant with applicable laws and regulations.
We believe that OFCCP will continue to focus in the upcoming audits on hiring and pay practices; consequently, defensible personnel activity and compensation records will likely be critical to closing an OFCCP review in a timely manner with a Notice of Compliance.
Ogletree Deakins' Affirmative Action and OFCCP Compliance Practice Group will continue to monitor further developments regarding CSALs and compliance reviews and will update the Affirmative Action/OFCCP blog with any additional news.
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