Has Your Company Been Complying With Your Contracts?
Everyday, we hear news about rights that have been infringed upon in the workplace. A lot of these problems fall under the increasingly prominent issue of contract compliance. Contract compliance entails many elements, but its main purpose to protect the working community from being taken advantage of at their jobs. The OFCCP, or the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, is a branch of the United States Department of Labor. Their prime directive is to create and enforce laws that protect employees.
The OFCCP is in charge of making sure that the prevailing wage is being paid to employees of business owners. The prevailing wage is the average of the wages, benefits, and overtime, paid to a worker in a specific country. The concept of prevailing wage has been turned into the creation of the minimum wage, where an employee cannot be paid less than the set minimum wage. This prevents employers from taking advantage of people who desperately need a job and are willing to work for way less than they deserve. Prevailing wage has become a major problem in states with a high rate of illegal immigration. Immigrants are being hired to do jobs as cheap labor since employers pay them way less than the American minimum wage.
Equal-opportunity employment is another very well known component of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance. This branch works to make sure everyone has an equal shot at getting hired for a job. By eliminating discrimination in many various forms, everyone is on the same level. Even though discrimination can be an elusive thing to cite, someone who thinks they are being discriminated against have options available to them.
Kickbacks are illegal payments made to potential sellers or employers that encourage them into a transaction. The OFCCP is also in charge of eliminating these. Acceptance fees are another form of kickbacks, which basically a fee that an employee would pay to the employer once they got hired. Monitoring by the OFCCP makes these practices illegal, once again leveling the job market playing field.
Hiring a contract compliance firm can help you figure out if any sort of misguided actions are taking place in your business. A firm has many ways of doing this, and most of it involves paperwork. Any one going outside the rules of the OFCCP generally leaves a paper trail, and it is the job of a contract compliance firm to figure out exactly what is going on. Receipts, bank statements, and invoices can tell an extensive story, and a contract compliance firm can help you uncover it. If someone in your business is engaging in business that is illegal, you can hire a contract compliance firm to track them down and restore the balance in your business.
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance is in place to make sure everyone in the United States is being treated fairly in their job as well as when they are looking for one. With the economy as it is, the OFCCP is having more contract compliance cases than ever, protecting the rights of you and other Americans.