News
Federal Announcements and Updates
As changes are made to the employment requirements under federal contracts by actions of the administration or congress, Pillar updates its material in a timely fashion. The changes (or possible changes being considered) for the current year are reflected below with some commentary on each. A full discussion of each subject is contained in Pillar’s Employment Requirements of Federal Contractors and Subcontractors.
Increased Statutory Acquisition Thresholds
On October 2, 2019, the acquisition councils issued a Proposed Rule (PR) to amend the FAR for statutory increases to the Simplified Acquisition Threshold (SAT) and Micro-Purchase Threshold (see Pillar’s blog). The PR estimates that the increase to the SAT will result in an additional $450 million in federal contracts falling below the SAT (about 10% of total federal contracts).
Form EEO-1 Summary Compensation Data, Part III
On September 12, 2019, the EEOC announced its intention not to seek a renewal for the Component 2 data collection from the OMB. The notice explains that the original 2016 EEOC estimate of the burden of the collection was less than 1/20th (<5%) of the amount produced by following GAO and OMB guidelines (recall that the burden estimate was questioned by and used as part of the OMB’s rationale for staying its approval for the collection, and the Court found that to be “arbitrary and capricious”).
2020 Executive Order Minimum Wage Rate
2019 SCA H&W Benefit Rate / Reduced Rate for Contracts with Paid Sick Leave
Form EEO-1 Summary Compensation Data, Part II
The D.C. District Court’s follow up Order (issued verbally from the bench April 25, 2019, written Order posted in Court’s docket folder April 26, 2019 and will be linked here once made public) to its March 4th Order vacating the OMB’s stay on the Component 2 summary compensation data collection, requires the EEOC to collect and employers to report, Component 2 data by September 30, 2019.
VEVRAA Hiring benchmark changed to 5.9%
Effective March 31, 2019, the national hiring benchmark (which is equal to the BLS’ calculation of veterans nationally in the civilian workforce for the previous year), is 5.9%.