This Week at Work: An HR and Employment Law Show
Sep 23, 2026 · 34 min · 11 segments
Employees’ side hustles are becoming a normal part of today’s workplace, but they can create very real legal and business risks for employers. In this episode of *This Week at Work*, Phil Brandt, CEO…
Bert GarlandHost
Phil BrandtHost
So with that intro, I will talk first about... what's really kind of become a diversity fraud paradox.
And just yesterday, Deloitte, the big accounting firm, big consulting firm, agreed to a pretty large settlement, $21.5 million with the Department of Justice.
So the sort of the humor- Yeah, it kind of gets to, you know, how can the government sort of at the executive level from the president and the administrative agencies really direct policy? And we talked a lot about it on this program.
And instead of using the traditional civil rights laws, the Department of Justice here used the False Claims Act under its Civil Rights Fraud Initiative.
And what the government did here was they argued that by implementing corporate diversity, equity and inclusion policies, while certifying at the same time that they were compliant with federal anti-discrimination contracts, they committed corporate fraud.
You can't have DE&I and then say that you're compliant with federal anti-discrimination contracts because the Department of Justice and the executive branch is taking the position that that is, in and of itself, discriminatory.
Quotas and requirements and people's evaluations were based on the level of DE&I that they sort of pushed through in their departments.
That created a serious risk exposure for Deloitte, and they got nailed and ultimately agreed to settle it with the Department of Justice.
They realize that's better risk management than taking it to trial or something like that, I believe.
Another one is earlier this month, the Federal Office of Personnel Management issued a sweeping final rule which reshapes federal reductions in force layoffs.
There's a little bit of a legal quirk here because the new rule explicitly abolishes the concept, Phil, and you might remember this from your union days, of bump and retreat.
That's a longstanding, slightly evocative legal term for how federal employees with higher seniority could historically displace or bump or take over the lower jobs.
So displacing would be bumping and taking over the lower jobs would be retreating of junior coworkers during layoffs.
So that it was always the junior workers who were always the ones who were ultimately let go.
And then normally you cycle through your seniority and allow bumping because some of those jobs may have been more desirable in certain departments or shifts or even pay in certain circumstances.
So with that intro, I will talk first about... what's really kind of become a diversity fraud paradox.
And just yesterday, Deloitte, the big accounting firm, big consulting firm, agreed to a pretty large settlement, $21.5 million with the Department of Justice.
So the sort of the humor- Yeah, it kind of gets to, you know, how can the government sort of at the executive level from the president and the administrative agencies really direct policy? And we talked a lot about it on this program.
And instead of using the traditional civil rights laws, the Department of Justice here used the False Claims Act under its Civil Rights Fraud Initiative.
And what the government did here was they argued that by implementing corporate diversity, equity and inclusion policies, while certifying at the same time that they were compliant with federal anti-discrimination contracts, they committed corporate fraud.
You can't have DE&I and then say that you're compliant with federal anti-discrimination contracts because the Department of Justice and the executive branch is taking the position that that is, in and of itself, discriminatory.
Quotas and requirements and people's evaluations were based on the level of DE&I that they sort of pushed through in their departments.
That created a serious risk exposure for Deloitte, and they got nailed and ultimately agreed to settle it with the Department of Justice.
They realize that's better risk management than taking it to trial or something like that, I believe.
Another one is earlier this month, the Federal Office of Personnel Management issued a sweeping final rule which reshapes federal reductions in force layoffs.
There's a little bit of a legal quirk here because the new rule explicitly abolishes the concept, Phil, and you might remember this from your union days, of bump and retreat.
That's a longstanding, slightly evocative legal term for how federal employees with higher seniority could historically displace or bump or take over the lower jobs.
So displacing would be bumping and taking over the lower jobs would be retreating of junior coworkers during layoffs.
So that it was always the junior workers who were always the ones who were ultimately let go.
And then normally you cycle through your seniority and allow bumping because some of those jobs may have been more desirable in certain departments or shifts or even pay in certain circumstances.
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