Washington, DC – Today, Co-Chairs of the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) Representatives Lois Frankel (FL-21), Brenda L. Lawrence (MI-14), Jackie Speier (CA-14), and Vice Chairs Representatives Veronica Escobar (TX-16) and Deb Haaland (NM-01) were joined by Representative Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) in sending a letter to the Department of Labor expressing strong opposition to the Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ (OFCCP) announcement stating that it will not “request, accept, or use” pay data broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity in its enforcement of nondiscrimination provisions as applied to federal contractors.

The letter states in part, “We ask that OFCCP immediately reverse its decision and consider the EEOC’s [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] expanded pay data in its enforcement of antidiscrimination laws.”

The letter continues, “This data is vital to helping detect patterns of discrimination and enforce equal pay laws as both the EEOC and OFCCP are required to do. The OFCCP’s preemptive announcement that it will not consider this data regardless of its importance or utility raises serious questions about the Administration’s commitment to prevent and address discrimination. The OFCCP and the EEOC have consistently taken steps to block this essential pay data collection and has refused to recognize its usefulness for enforcement.”

The full text of the letter can be found here.

###