If you haven’t gotten around to filing your required EEO-1 Component 2 data with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), don’t worry about it. You now have an additional three months—until Jan. 31, 2020—to turn it in, thanks to the dictates of the federal judge who arrogated to herself micromanagement of the process.
EEOC earlier had extended the original Sept. 30 filing deadline because it said not enough employers had filed their forms. EEOC reported the deadline extension to the federal district court judge supervising the filing process after she earlier found the commission had acted illegally when it withdrew the Component 2 reporting requirement imposed by the Obama-era EEOC.
On striking down the Trump EEOC’s action doing away with the form, she ordered the commission to collect from employers the required data for calendar years 2017 and 2018. She later set a target response rate of 72.7% of eligible employers, but only about 39.7% of those expected to file had submitted their reports by Sept. 27, according to the commission.
Then things got more confusing, even if you thought that couldn’t at all be possible. Early last month, EEOC asked the court to allow the data collection to end on Nov. 11. It reported to the court that as of Oct. 8, 75.9% of eligible filers had submitted their Component 2 data, exceeding the 72.7% target she had established.
In spite of EEOC reporting that it had met the judge’s target, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), which had brought the suit that resulted in overturning EEOC’s attempt to eliminate the Component 2 reporting requirements, objected to the commission’s new proposed deadline, arguing that the EEOC must continue to collect Component 2 data until a 98.25% response rate is achieved.
That sounded better to the judge than her own earlier target percentage, and apparently that is why she extended the deadline to Jan. 31, 2020. Just to make things more fun, the judge also told the commission that it must continue to provide status reports to the NWLC and the court every 21 days, resuming on Nov. 1, 2019, and continuing through Jan. 31, 2020.
Rest assured, even if you are not an employer who is required to submit this data, you will be paying for this. It is believed to have cost the commission $1.5 million to keep the portal open to Nov. 11, and is expected to cost $150,000 per week from then on. Because of the short comment period before the original deadline of Sept. 30 set by the judge, EEOC had been forced to hire an outside contractor to collect and analyze the data because it lacked the resources to do so itself on such short notice.
Originally adopted by the Obama-era EEOC, the EEO-1, Component 2 form requires that employers collect extensive employment data organized by 12 pay bands that range in salary from about $19,000 to more than $208,000 a year, divided across 10 job categories. Employers then must divide this information up in accordance with the same racial, ethnic and gender groupings previously used when submitting demographic data in earlier EEO-1 forms.
All U.S. employers with 100 or more employees, as well as federal contractors and subcontractors who employ 50 or more workers, must supply aggregated data for 2017 and 2018 regarding the pay and hours employees worked.
This data must to be drawn from one single payroll period of their choosing that occurred between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of each of the reporting years. Employers are required to submit Component 2 if they had 100 or more employees during both of these workforce snapshot periods (50 for federal contractors and subcontractors).
Meanwhile, an appeal of the judge’s original decision reinstalling the Component 2 form continues to be heard by a federal appeals court.
Employers should submit any additional questions about this year’s EEO-1 Form to the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) HelpDesk. (NORC is assembling and analyzing the data for EEOC).
The center can be contacted toll‑free at 877-324‑6214 or by email at [email protected]. Additional information and advice is available from EEOC at: https://eeoccomp2.norc.org/info. The commission also is offering the answers to employers’ frequently asked questions at: https://eeoccomp2.norc.org/faq.
