For those who didn’t get enough data parsing and statistical analysis in posts from last Thursday and Friday, we kick off the week looking at a new report from the Center for Corporate Equality (CCE), which recently published Review of OFCCP Enforcement Statistics Related to Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (PDF). In other words, a look at whether historical data collected by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) warrants implementation of the proposed rule requiring federal contractors to track recruitment, hiring, and retention of people with disabilities, with the goal of having 7% of the company’s workforce comprised of individuals from this population set.
The report’s conclusion that not enough evidence of discrimination against military veterans and individuals with disabilities exists to warrant the new rule changes was quickly seized upon by The Associated General Contractors of America (AGCA), whose press release was regurgitated verbatim by LoanSafe.org blogger Alex Ferreras. The headline’s description of the Labor Department’s proposed rule as a “costly, complex hiring mandate” leaves no question the AGCA feels it has found statistical corroboration for its preconceived opinion; and that’s before you get to the quotes from spokesman Brian Turmail, who, to his credit, doesn’t spend the entirety of the seven paragraphs railing against the federal government for doing what any organization that engages contracted labor has the legal right to do. The penultimate paragraph of the release says:
Turmail added that construction firms were already working aggressively to hire veterans and people with disabilities, noting many employers participate in programs to train and recruit returning veterans or to accommodate individuals with disabilities.
Obviously, “many” is not the same as “all”; given the context it probably doesn’t even mean “most.” Turmail’s ambiguous characterization of the many employers working hard to create job opportunities for people with disabilities gets to the root of why the DOL is proposing the rule, as well as some of the problems with the conclusions drawn in the CCE report.
The data in Table 8 found on page 19 includes an exact number of OFCCP compliance evaluations completed each year by federal contractors. These evaluations are distributed using an “administratively neutral selection system” (page 9), and the most completed in any year was 4,942 in 2010. Nearly 5,000 evaluations is certainly “many”; but when Table 9 (page 20) estimates the total number of federal contractor establishments each year at 285,390 (a figure that an accompanying footnote says “is likely a gross underestimation”), it becomes difficult to accept the statistical validity of a study that bases its conclusions on 1.7% of the total potential respondents.
“What gets measured gets done,” OFCCP director Patricia Shiu told The Wall Street Journal back in March; and the portion of the new rule that requires federal contractors to track their recruiting efforts is a way to ensure “many more” companies reach out to organizations that provide career training and contract services, and get “many more” people with disabilities into the workforce.
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Image by mikecogh (Mike Coughlan), used under its Creative Commons license.