The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission yesterday unveiled a revised version of its proposal to expand pay data collection from federal contractors and other employers

The EEOC announced the publication of its revised proposal to collect pay data through the Employer Information Report (EEO-1), a longstanding joint information collection of EEOC and the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).

The proposed revision would include collecting summary pay data from employers, including federal contractors, with 100 or more employees. The pay data will assist the agencies in identifying possible pay discrimination and assist employers in promoting equal pay in their workplaces. As Compliance Week previously reported, the EEOC will be paying closer attention to whether an employer has conducted a pay analysis, meaning new compliance headaches for companies.

For over 50 years, employers have completed the EEO-1 form to provide EEOC and OFCCP with workforce data by race, ethnicity, sex and job category. This proposal would add summary data reported by pay ranges and hours worked.

Under the updated proposal, the report on 2017 employment information would be due by March 31, 2018. The revised proposal may be reviewed on the Federal Register website and will be published on July 14, 2016. Members of the public will have 30 days from that date— until Aug. 15—to submit written comments to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which approves federal information collections.

This notice follows an initial public comment period from Feb. 1, 2016 through April 1, 2016 and a public hearing held at EEOC headquarters on March 16. EEOC said it considered the oral and written testimony of those witnesses and over 300 public comments from individual members of the public, employers, employer associations, members of Congress, civil rights groups, women's organizations, labor unions, academics, industry groups, law firms and human resources organizations and professionals. EEOC also considered academic literature on compensation practices and on discrimination, as well as studies about trends in compensation and collecting pay information.

EEOC adopted specific suggestions made by commenters, such as moving the due date for the EEO-1 survey from Sept. 30, 2017 to March 31, 2018, to simplify employer reporting by allowing employers to use existing W-2 pay reports, which are calculated based on the calendar year.

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