When it comes to a
successful company, the right mix of people is as important as the right mix of
skills. Different backgrounds bring vital perspectives that help with decision
making and innovation. In the government contracting world, affirmative action
requirements have helped ensure an innovative environment persists.
Until now, by both reason
and law, the government has not set a hiring quota for ethnic, racial and other
demographic groups. But that could change with the December 9, 2011 Labor
Department proposed rule seeking to establish a uniform national utilization
goal requiring government contractors to ensure at least 7 percent of their
workers are disabled employees.
As written, the proposal, which PSC recently submitted comments on, is simply
unworkable. Imposing a uniform utilization goal in every region of the country
and across all job groups ignores the fact that each community and each job
group has its own unique demographics. Complying with the goal may be
impossible in some industry categories and in some job skills. Furthermore,
while the rule establishes a hiring “goal,” Congress, agencies and the public
often interpret those numbers as mandates.
The proposal also ignores the
difficulties unique to implementing affirmative action for disabled individuals
and in coming to an accurate estimate of the protected class as many covered
disabilities are not visible and many individuals may choose not to disclose
their disabilities for privacy reasons. Furthermore, companies cannot confirm
certifications with individuals because of laws put in place to protect
minority groups from discrimination. These same laws could open contractors to
lawsuits if contractors comply with the proposed rule’s requirements to capture
data on the number of interviewees who were disabled. It is logical to expect
that a disabled person not offered the job may conclude that any question about
their disability contributed to the negative hiring decision and thus was
discriminated against.
Additionally, several of the
requirements in the regulation are burdensome, mandating the collection of
large amounts of data that are not clearly valuable and the retention of that
data for years longer than necessary.
Furthermore, the introduction of a
mandated set of recruitment sources disrupts the careful mix of sources that
contractors select on their own under the current approach. The rule offers no
evidence that allowing contractors to pick their own recruitment sources has
failed.
While it is important to ensure the full participation of
people with disabilities in the workforce, it is unclear whether parts of the
new proposed regulation are necessary or appropriate to achieve that goal.
