Article contributed by Mark Adams, EANE
With the month of June upon us, federal contractors and subcontractors with federal affirmative action obligations are reminded that they have a responsibility to register (if they haven’t already done so) and certify that they have an affirmative action plan in place no later than June 29th, 2023. Federal construction contractors are NOT subject to this requirement.
Covered federal contractors and subcontractors can visit the contractor portal landing page to get this process started at: https://contractorportal.dol.gov/
For companies that had already gone through this exercise last year, all you will need to do is to log back in the portal, update any changes to your organization in the dashboard (under the “Manage Establishments or Functional Business Units” or “My Company” sections if needed), and then proceed to the AAP Certification Form to complete the two certification questions.
For federal contractors and subcontractors who did not complete these requirements last year, they will have a need to register and complete an account profile first before proceeding to the certification steps.
In this regard, it is strongly recommended that covered contractors or subcontractors retrieve their 2018 EEO-1 reporting information prior to starting this process as they will ask to submit their Employer Identification Number (EIN), EEO-1 Headquarter/Company number, and EEO-1 Establishment number as defined on the portal online form. Setting that information up will pull and auto populate the company information that you can edit thereafter.
If the covered contractor or subcontractor does not have the Headquarter/Company number and Establishment number, then the contractor can alternatively just check the “Identifiers Not Known Path” box and just proceed with keying in your EIN number. Doing so, will require you to key in your company information instead.
Company information collected during the registration process includes company legal name, parent name (as reported on the EEO-1 report), DUNS number, and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) number.
Upon registering your organization, the covered contractor or subcontractor can then log back into the portal to “certify” that each of their covered establishments have an affirmative action plan that covers those establishments via an online certification form that can be found after logging back into the portal. The certification form has both a “certification question” asking the contractor to represent that they are an:
- Entity that has developed and maintained affirmative action programs at each establishment.
- Entity has been party to q qualifying federal contract or subcontract for 120 days or more and has not developed or maintained an affirmative action program: or
- Entity became a covered federal contractor or subcontractor within the past 120 days and therefore have not yet developed applicable affirmative action programs.
After answering to one of those three options, there is then an affirmation step requiring the federal contractor or subcontractor to affirm to the declaration to the answer option selected.
After this step is the selection of the establishments covered by the contractor/subcontractor account and checking them off to certify whether those establishments indeed are covered by a plan (for multi-establishment federal contractors this should account for the various establishments identified in the 2018 EEO-1 reporting).
After checking the establishment and clicking on the “Submit certification” button, the process is then complete! It is important to note that failing to follow all these steps may result in the federal contractor nor subcontractor’s establishments not being certified.
The Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has indicated that a covered contractor or subcontractor’s failure to certify its establishments can be grounds for initiating an audit of those locations.
There is a user guide that delves into these steps further. To access this guide, click here.