VEVRAA Complaints: Progress?

DOL VETS CONGRESSIONAL REPORT FINALLY RESEMBLES ITS STATUTORY OBLIGATION

I have been hounding a few bureaucrats at the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS) in the Labor Department about not reporting VEVRAA complaint investigation data to Congress. I’ve written about that effort here and here, but the TLDR version is that nobody knows that employment discrimination complaints by veterans have been denied at a disproportionately high rate because DoL has been noncompliant with 38 U.S.C. § 4212(c).

Since February 2020 (at the latest), I have been raising the alarm with DoL, VETS, GAO, VSOs, I even filed criminal complaints with the FBI against the bureaucrats responsible for the reports under 18 U.S.C. § 1001. On the surface, nothing was working. Worse, the COVID pandemic provided cover for VETS to delay the release of their Congressional report for months. According to a committee staffer on the House VA Committee, the 2019 report was delivered in March of the next year. The 2020 report was not delivered until August. Here is what the report includes (see page 18);

What is missing, and which I hoped to see, is how many complaints resulted in a finding of merit. In other words, how many discriminatory, harassing, or biased government contractors were found to be in violation of VEVRAA. Thanks to the DoL Enforcement Data website, we know that just one out of 18 VEVRAA complaint investigations closed in 2020 resulted in a violation. That does not explain why the VETS report cites 194 complaints, a discrepancy I can’t figure out and which VETS has refused to explain to me in multiple emailed requests.

But the fact is that Congress now has more information about veterans (lack of enforcement of) employment protections. I don’t know who else has been barking up their tree, but I’m going to assume it was THIS (👎 pointing at me) persistent widow who managed to create some change. I don’t feel like celebrating though, because, taking the VETS report at face value, the numbers are still frustrating at best.

Of almost 200 veterans who mustered the nerve to report their employer for bias, harassment, and/or discrimination, only eleven managed to get any real action taken, in the form of a Settlement or Conciliation agreement.

Complaints can only be Closed (44% of the outcomes) if the complainant withdraws, perhaps under threat or duress, or if the DOL decides they have no jurisdiction. Which, let’s be honest, is an easy way to keep departmental costs down. And military suicides up.

EEOC referrals (40%), as in my case, do not resolve the complaint and are usually dismissed because the EEOC does not protect veterans. Only the DoL can investigate veteran employment discrimination. EEOC referrals are like personality disorders for discharging soldiers, it is a lazy way to pass the buck.

Finally, a “No Violation” is the same as “Notice of Right to Sue” (11%) in that it is the DoL telling the veteran to shut the fµ¢k up and drive on in a hostile work environment, which just got hostile-er because they blew the whistle.

The silver lining is that Congressional Reporting improved, it went from one sentence in the annual VETS report to a paragraph and a table. That’s something, even if it isn’t much.