Berkshire Industry Update: Compliance Information Now Aggregated and Searchable
Imagine a tool that would allow anyone using the Internet to access information about your company's safety records, layoffs, jobs outsourced, and labor and employment law violations. Well, imagine no more. A reporting tool, called Job Tracker, has been developed for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to report information about companies from several sources. It can be found on an affiliate website called Working America at:
http://www.workingamerica.org/jobtracker/Job Tracker was created as a searchable database available to the public. According to the website it is unique in its ability to “expose companies that have been exporting jobs, laying off workers and violating safety and health laws and labor laws.”
Job Tracker uses information gathered from several sources, one being the Department of Labor (DOL). It is able to pull the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) compliance activity from the DOL’s Enforcement Database. Job Tracker also obtained information by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for activity under the following laws: Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA); Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN); Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA); and National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Their team of researchers also included searches of LEXIS/NEXIS, news media, and Google for reports of layoffs and job exporting.
Users can perform a search by zip code, and data is pulled from within a 50 mile radius for all of the above inquiries. The results are categorized as follows:
- Jobs Exporting
- Mass Layoffs
- Safety and Health
- Labor Law
- OFCCP
A color coded map is displayed to indicate where the companies are located. Under each of the categories there is a link to the list of companies found in the search. Each list identifies the company and the number of incidents reported. The OFCCP results provided include the following types of violations (definitions provided by Job Tracker.):
- Accommodation: Failure to provide a reasonable adjustment to a job or work environment that makes it possible for an individual with a disability to perform job duties, or to accommodate an employee's sincerely held religious practices, barring undue hardship
- Denial of Records or Access: Failure or refusal to provide records or access that a company is legally required to provide
- Hiring: Discrimination with regard to hiring
- Medical Screening: An inappropriate use of medical screening, or a screening conducted in an inappropriate manner
- Past Performance: An employer's consideration of past performance, in a discriminatory way, when making a decision to hire or fire, or to take other employment action
- Promotion: Discrimination with regard to promotion
- Recordkeeping or Support: Failure to collect or maintain records required
- Recruitment: Discrimination with regard to recruitment
- Salary: Discrimination with regard to salary.
- Selection or Testing: Discrimination in the selection or testing of employees
- Systemic Discrimination: A pattern or practice of discrimination, sometimes called class discrimination, which involves a recurring practice or continuing policy of discrimination, rather than an isolated act—systemic discrimination may or may not include intent to discriminate.
The database contains information on over 400,000 companies; however, the site does not say how often the records are updated, and the results do not always include dates of filings or violations. Some of the results include the name of the CEO, and reported compensation. There is also a feature on the results page that solicits the names of companies that should be reported in Job Tracker.
Contractors should know what information is available in this publicly searchable database. Berkshire recommends monitoring the information that is posted on an ongoing basis, whether it is Job Tracker or the DOL Enforcement Database. Both of these databases are accessible to the public and the information is freely available.
For more information, please contact Berkshire Associates at 800.882.8904 or email bai@berkshireassociates.com.