The Modern Workplace

If you do business with the federal government, chances are that you're feeling weighed down by the various new requirements placed on you over the past year. We've discussed these requirements in past posts here and here. That's why you may be surprised to hear that the US Department of Labor's Veteran Employment and Training Service (VETS) published a final rule last week that actually makes something easier for federal contractors. The rule modifies and simplifies the reporting requirements under the Vietnam Era Veterans' adjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) for federal contractors with contracts of $100,000 or more.  Previously, contractors had to file a VETS-100 Report and/or VETS-100A Report, on which they reported data on "covered veterans" in their workforce. The VETS' new rule eliminates the VETS-100 Report and renames the VETS-100A Report as the VETS-4212 Report.

The change to reporting protected veterans in the aggregate has three main benefits. First, it provides added privacy to disabled veterans. Previously, contractors had to specify on their publicly available report that a disabled veteran worked in a certain job group. Now that the new report only requires the employer to report a "protected veteran" in that job group, it is more difficult to figure out who might be a disabled veteran just by looking at the report. Second, this change will eliminate double counting of a single veteran who may meet the definition of two or more of the four categories. Finally, the VETS is predicting that the new approach will save federal contractors money, and who doesn't like that?