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Dol Report
by Catherine Shepard-Haier
WAGE obtained a copy of the 2001 Conciliation Agreements between the
Department of Labor and UC under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Department conducted compliance reviews of human resources data
at the Office of the President (UCOP) and the Berkeley campus.
The study began in 1997.
A compliance review of human resources data is performed to determine
whether UC is following federal regulations concerning hiring, salary
increases, promotions, layoffs, and affirmative action, among others.
Federal contract and grant funds may be terminated if UC fails to meet
these standards.
The University is given the opportunity to respond to the results and
adjust its methods before the final report is issued, making it necessary
to read between the lines in order to determine the Department of
Labor´s initial findings. This is an attempt to describe the
infractions we believe the Department found, based on the information
contained in this report.
The Department of Labor´s Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP)
reported deficiencies at UCOP including:
- The implementation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Vietnam Veterans´ Readjustment Act of 1974 and Equal Employment Opportunity policies;
- Failure to collect adequate data on race, gender and ethnic group;
- Failure to collect applicant rejection ratios by race and gender;
- Inadequate adverse impact analysis reports;
- Failure to identify problem areas by organizational unit (department);
- Failure to implement adequate action-oriented programs and correct areas where women and minorities are underutilized.
We interpret this to mean that UC violated disability discrimination laws
and did not collect data that sufficed to show whether or not it met
affirmative action requirements.
Violations identified in the UC Berkeley Conciliation Agreement were similar
in terms of inadequate data collection. In addition, UCB is to provide
annual progress reports for two years on:
- Staff and academic hires, competitive selections, promotions and terminations;
- Reclassified staff employees by race and gender "to determine if women and minorities have been disproportionately rejected for higher classified positions";
- Longitudinal analyses of academic employee personnel transactions regarding hiring, promotion and merit increases.
We believe this shows that UCB did not collect sufficient information and/or
analyze it adequately to know whether its affirmative action, reclassification,
and promotion policies were followed.
-wage@wage.org-