THE COMPLAINT PROCESS, ACCORDING TO VEVRAA

The complaint process begins when a covered veteran believes that a contractor isn't complying with the VEVRAA-mandated provision of their contract. To believe that, you have to know that the provision is actually in the contract. Unless you happen to have a federal contract for a dollar value over $150,000 lying around--and it would be odd if you did--you have to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get a copy of one. You can get the details for such contracts in the federal database found here by searching for the name of a company. The site will summarize all of the federal contracts that a company has, what agency signed them, and how much taxpayer money they are getting. For example, searching for "Health and Human Services" will tell you that HHS made a deal on March 28, 2023, with a total contract value of $1,136,436,294.59. They were paying for legal support--presumably, a lot of it. 

But does this agreement--for personal property and nonpersonal services in an amount quite a bit above the dollar threshold--contain a provision requiring that Lockheed employ qualified covered veterans? At this point, we are not sure. Confirmation requires asking NASA to give us a copy of the agreement. 

NASA--like every government agency--offers a FOIA request form online. Filling these out isn't the problem. You create an account, then describe the documents you want as specifically as possible and give some information as to why you want them. Ideally, they'll accept and process your request--as soon as they feel like it and not a minute sooner. You can also request a fee waiver, which should be granted unless you want the documents for commercial use.

Having applied for many documents from many federal departments, I can assure you that they do not all treat you the same way. The Department of Defense, while in no hurry to comply, has nevertheless sent me the agreements I've asked for, at no cost. By contrast, one agency determined (without explanation) that I was a "commercial requester" and demanded a $408 fee for their time and effort. Because I am a veteran seeking information to help other veterans, you have probably deduced that the extremely unhelpful department I was dealing with was the VA. 

Another detail added to the regulations by the Department of Labor was a time limit. They specify that a "complaint must be filed within 300 days of the date of the alleged violation." Putting aside the fact that an "alleged violation" of an affirmative action requirement would be ongoing and not tied to a single date, demonstrating that a provision for a contractor to violate even exists requires a veteran to procure a copy of the relevant contract. For an HHS agreement, it could take over 600 working days to get the document through FOIA. Of course, a complex request takes significantly less time than a simple request for some reason, but 289 working days is still longer than 300 regular days.

This is a problem. 

I submitted a request to the Air Force for a copy of an agreement worth $159 million. They'll let me see it but this is how much I'm supposed to pay for the privilege. 

Now that I have outlined the complaint procedure for VEVRAA noncompliance, I would like to recommend that nobody attempt to use it as a way to address violations. To be clear, I very much want this to be something covered veterans can successfully do, but until the statute is amended, filing complaints with the Department of Labor--through its subdivision, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)--is time wasted. The only justification for doing it is if you think that my experiences are either exaggerated or uncharacteristic of the process, and you need to see for yourself. In that case: bon chance!

Some government entities choose uselessness; others have uselessness thrust upon them. With respect to VEVRAA, the DoL can boast of both. The current version of the law gives them no power to discipline federal departments that omit the required VEVRAA provisions from their agreements. That's forced uselessness.  

The DoL decided in 2007 that by doing a little more it could do a lot less. This is uselessness by choice. While VEVRAA had been designed to provide "special emphasis to the employment of" veterans since it was originally drafted (see §2012) over thirty years earlier, the DoL began to tell everyone that the purpose of the law was actually to prevent discrimination. They introduced regulations that effectively nullify the law.

Their addition to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) revised enforcement guidelines for VEVRAA. Despite the fact that the statute defines and uses the term "covered veteran," the current regulations use the designation "protected veteran"--without explaining why any veteran would want or need to be protected from beneficial treatment. The DoL's OFCCP website goes so far as to claim that their term "is established in the statute and cannot be changed by OFCCP," but it isn't and they tried. Not only is the DoL deceiving employers and veterans, they are using our money to keep the gaslight burning.  

I filed a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Labor, explaining that their OFCCP was promulgating false information about VEVRAA in a way that egregiously undermines the complaint process. In a bad way. The DoL referred the matter to the people whose malfeasance I was attempting to snitch on, the OFCCP. The OFCCP, in turn, assured me that the OFCCP's interpretation of VEVRAA was correct because it conformed to the regulations that are themselves the OFCCP's interpretation of VEVRAA. 

Apparently I don't value my time, because I followed up my first pointless whistleblower complaint to the DoL with another, explaining how the OFCCP's response was worse than useless. Same result--the DoL's VEVRAA policies are detrimental to veterans and contrary to federal law, but the DoL is comfortable with that and doesn't feel the need to change anything. The agency's insistence on giving their own self-generated regulations priority over the actual statute (more on that here) needs to be challenged.