News

The DOL just announced a final rule has been published “revising Vets-100A and renaming it the VETS-4212 report.”

“The VETS-100 Report will no longer be used. The VETS-4212 Report requires contractors to report specified information on protected veterans in their workforce in the aggregate, rather than for each category of veterans protected under the statute, reducing the required reporting elements by almost half, from 82 to 42. Under VEVRAA, the term “protected veterans” includes: disabled veterans, veterans who served on active duty during a war or campaign for which a campaign badge was authorized, veterans who were awarded an Armed Forces Service Medal and recently separated veterans.

Under this final rule, the department will receive valuable information on the number of protected veterans employed by federal contractors and the job categories in which they work. We estimate that this rule will ultimately result in substantial savings for contractors – approximately $18.2 million over a 10-year period.  The final rule was published in the Federal Register, and it is available at https://federalregister.gov/a/2014-22818.”

Source: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/vets/VETS20141802.htm

If you have been waiting to see how the Department of Labor (DOL) will deal with the Veterans categories with this year’s Vets-100(A) filings, given the new VEVRAA regulations and self-ID categories, then your wait is over. The 2014 VETS-100(A) reporting requirement will be the same as last year’s, meaning the new VEVRAA categories will not be in effect for VETS-100(A) filing this summer (see screenshot below). It also means that Contractors will still need to file VETS-100(A) if they meet the criteria.

So, if you file VETS-100A reports, which is the vast majority of Federal Contractors, (all nonexempt federal contractors and subcontractors with a contract or subcontract entered into or modified on or after December 1, 2003, in the amount of $100,000 or more with any department or agency of the United States for the procurement of personal property and non-personal services), then you need to use these veterans categories for your filing this summer:

• Disabled Veteran
• Other Protected Veteran
• Armed Forces Service Medal Veteran
• Recently Separated Veteran
• Non-Veteran

This is the reporting form you will use (you can file online too, in addition to filing manually on a hard copy): http://www.dol.gov/vets/programs/fcp/VETS-100A-Form-rev-2013.pdf

If you file VETS-100 reports (all nonexempt federal contractors and subcontractors with a contract or subcontract entered into before December 1, 2003, in the amount of $25,000 or more with any department or agency of the United States for the procurement of personal property and non-personal services), then you need to use these veterans categories for your filing this summer:

• Special Disabled Veteran
• Veteran of the Vietnam-Era
• Recently Separated Veteran
• Other Protected Veteran
• Non-Veteran

This is the reporting form you will use (you can file online too, in addition to filing manually on a hard copy): http://www.dol.gov/vets/programs/fcp/VETS-100-Form-rev-2013.pdf

You may want to check internally to see when you entered into your Federal Contract(s).

These categories are not to be confused with the new categories associated to the pre- and post-offer self-ID form for the new VEVRAA regulations:

[ ] DISABLED VETERAN
[ ] RECENTLY SEPARATED VETERAN
[ ] ACTIVE WARTIME OR CAMPAIGN BADGE VETERAN
[ ] ARMED FORCES SERVICE MEDAL VETERAN
[ ] I am a protected veteran, but I choose not to self‐identify the classifications to which I belong.
[ ] I am NOT a protected veteran.

The theory is that maybe next year, these categories will line up across all systems to make this whole process a lot less confusing.

In addition, there is now a handy link to check if you filed your 2012 and 2013 reports.

For more VETS-100(A) information, please go to: http://www.dol.gov/vets/vets-100.html