Labor Dept. Wants Data on Contractor Pay, Benefits The Labor Department plans to require federal contractors and subcontractors to submit detailed information on employees’ pay and benefits. “The purpose of the proposed new tool is to provide insight into potential problems of pay discrimination by contractors that warrant further review or evaluation,” Labor said in an Aug. 10 Federal Register notice of proposed rulemaking. Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs invited comments by Oct. 11. Several contractor organizations denounced the proposal as intrusive and burdensome. A presidential executive order already prohibits companies that do business with the government from discriminating in employment practices—including compensation—on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin or religion. According to the Federal Register notice, Labor is considering requiring contractors to submit information on all compensation and benefits broken down by job category and by gender and race or ethnic groups. “Pay discrimination continues to plague women and people of color in the workforce,” OFCCP Director Patricia A. Shiu said in a news release. “This proposal is about gathering better data, which will allow us to focus our enforcement resources where they are most needed. We can’t truly solve this problem until we can see it, measure it and put dollar figures on it.” The notice poses 15 questions for public comment on the types of data that should be requested, the scope of information OFCCP should seek, how the data should be collected, how the data should be used, what the tool should look like, which contractors should be required to submit compensation data and how the tool might create potential burdens for small businesses.