New Round of Pre-Scheduling Notices Being Sent to Federal Contractors and Subcontractors

OFCCP is currently sending out pre-scheduling notices to inform companies that a facility may be the subject of an up-coming affirmative action compliance review.  These letters are dated July 16, 2014.  As has been the case during the past few years, OFCCP is sending these letters to individual locations that may be the subject of a review.  Both single-facility organizations and multi-facility organizations may receive a pre-scheduling notice.  When these types of letters were first used by OFCCP in 2007, they were called Corporate Scheduling Announcement Letters (CSALs) and were sent to the corporate headquarters for organizations that had been scheduled for more than one compliance review that year.  Now, there is no specific correspondence sent to a corporate headquarters unless the corporate headquarters itself is the subject of a review.

The current round of pre-scheduling notices are slightly different than the last set of pre-scheduling notices sent by OFCCP in February or March of 2014 in that the current set of notices includes a reference to the corporate parent for the facility receiving the letter.  This is true even if there are no other facilities for that company (in which case the name of the facility receiving the letter will be the same as the name of the corporate parent).  It appears that OFCCP is deriving the name of the corporate parent from EEO-1 reports
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It is important to note that a pre-scheduling notice does NOT formally open a compliance review.  The pre-scheduling notice is simply an informational letter notifying a facility that OFCCP expects to conduct a compliance review there.  The formal scheduling letter that opens a compliance review may be sent at any time following the receipt of the pre-scheduling notice.  (In fact, we are aware of several instances during 2013 where a company received a scheduling letter and then subsequently received a pre-scheduling notice.) While most facilities that receive a pre-scheduling notice will ultimately receive a scheduling letter and will begin a compliance review, it is possible that there will be facilities receiving a pre-scheduling notice that do not receive a scheduling letter.  However, all companies receiving a pre-scheduling notice should assume that a compliance review will be occurring soon and should plan accordingly.

More information on OFCCP’s use of CSALs can be found on the agency’s website at http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/csalfaqs.htm.