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Here's a followup[0][1] to the OFCCP vs Google suit mentioned in the article. Google showed it would cost more to produce the data than the value of the Federa

Here's a followup[0][1] to the OFCCP vs Google suit mentioned in the article. Google showed it would cost more to produce the data than the value of the Federal contract, so OFCCP did not get complete access. [0]: https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/Pages/Google-refusal-to-give-OFCCP-information-upheld.aspx https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/... [1]: https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-denial-of-access-case https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-deni...

pc86 8y ago
I was curious to see what the OFCCP asked for and it seems like an insanely huge undertaking to compile it, which was probably why the court ruled "OFCCP's request was not reasonable and was unduly burdensome." My favorite one is a tie between "salary and job history for each employee going back to the founding of the corporation in 1998 for any long-term employees" without defining long-term employees (perhaps OFCCP did define it?) and "the name, address, telephone number and personal email of every employee" in the 21,000-employee 2015 snapshot or the 19,539-employee 2014 snapshot.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Doesn't seem that expensive to comply with this.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Imagine that you’ve changed payroll vendors, HR system vendors twice, and payroll/HR leads 5x across the timeframe in question. Now how hard/costly is it?
    - coredog64 8y ago
      Doesn’t Oracle sell a widely used financials package? I’m guessing they eat their own dog food.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    It doesn't seem this would be an undue burden for a company that was keeping proper records. The court shouldn't care what kind of burden it is for a company whose records are a mess. Giving into that creates a moral/regulatory hazard.
- itronitron 8y ago
  both of those would easily fit into one excel spreadsheet, it's silly to think that a company like Google would not be able to produce that easily. The OFCCP may have had a better shot if they said 99.99% of Google employees, instead of every one of them.
- da_chicken 8y ago
  Actually, I work at a public school district that has about 800 employees for 8,000 students and I help maintain the FIS/HRMS. Going back 10 years for this information would be pretty trivial for us. Our systems already have reports that do the above. The name, address, telephone, and personal email is basic demographic information in an HR system. Yes, I can imagine the kind of complexity that would arise in a 25 fold increase in personnel, but, if anything, the data systems would have more historical data in them. Financial records retention typically involves manually purging records rather than the opposite. After all, you've got to store at least two years of information just to be able to handle taxes and auditing. It's all saved in the system and date tracked appropriately. Going back longer than that would be difficult, but that's only due to records retention laws. We're not required to maintain most personnel records longer than about 7-8 years (though some go as long as 50 or more, such as the types of records that pensions require). Then again, I'm also familiar with FOIA requests, and I'm aware than at least 50% of the cost is probably going to be the cost for lawyers to vet the information before release.

pc86 8y ago

I was curious to see what the OFCCP asked for and it seems like an insanely huge undertaking to compile it, which was probably why the court ruled "OFCCP's request was not reasonable and was unduly burdensome." My favorite one is a tie between "salary and job history for each employee going back to the founding of the corporation in 1998 for any long-term employees" without defining long-term employees (perhaps OFCCP did define it?) and "the name, address, telephone number and personal email of every employee" in the 21,000-employee 2015 snapshot or the 19,539-employee 2014 snapshot.

sjg007 8y ago
Doesn't seem that expensive to comply with this.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Imagine that you’ve changed payroll vendors, HR system vendors twice, and payroll/HR leads 5x across the timeframe in question. Now how hard/costly is it?
  - coredog64 8y ago
    Doesn’t Oracle sell a widely used financials package? I’m guessing they eat their own dog food.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  It doesn't seem this would be an undue burden for a company that was keeping proper records. The court shouldn't care what kind of burden it is for a company whose records are a mess. Giving into that creates a moral/regulatory hazard.
itronitron 8y ago
both of those would easily fit into one excel spreadsheet, it's silly to think that a company like Google would not be able to produce that easily. The OFCCP may have had a better shot if they said 99.99% of Google employees, instead of every one of them.
da_chicken 8y ago
Actually, I work at a public school district that has about 800 employees for 8,000 students and I help maintain the FIS/HRMS. Going back 10 years for this information would be pretty trivial for us. Our systems already have reports that do the above. The name, address, telephone, and personal email is basic demographic information in an HR system. Yes, I can imagine the kind of complexity that would arise in a 25 fold increase in personnel, but, if anything, the data systems would have more historical data in them. Financial records retention typically involves manually purging records rather than the opposite. After all, you've got to store at least two years of information just to be able to handle taxes and auditing. It's all saved in the system and date tracked appropriately. Going back longer than that would be difficult, but that's only due to records retention laws. We're not required to maintain most personnel records longer than about 7-8 years (though some go as long as 50 or more, such as the types of records that pensions require). Then again, I'm also familiar with FOIA requests, and I'm aware than at least 50% of the cost is probably going to be the cost for lawyers to vet the information before release.