Crib Sheet: Equal Rights at Work

Understanding the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

By Keith White, University of Virginia
Monday November 13, 2006

Though virtually unknown to the general public, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is America’s premier civil rights crusader against workplace discrimination based on race, gender, age, or disability. For 40 years the EEOC has responded to employee accusations of workplace discrimination, working to ensure that all Americans work in a fair and prejudice-free work environment. And it has done this while facing chronic under-funding and staggering public demand.

Take a look at this small sampling of successful EEOC action against civil rights violations in the workplace:

• 2006: An employee of a federally contracted janitorial service was awarded $190,000 after being sexually harassed and then fired after making a complaint.

• 1999: A mentally retarded employee was rewarded $230,000 for being unfairly fired from Chuck E. Cheese. Why was he let go? Even though the local manager and staff supported his continued employment, a regional manager did not want to hire “those kind of people.”

• 1991: A $66 million settlement was awarded to female employees of AT&T who were forced to take pregnancy leave before medically necessary

• 1982: One hundred and twelve former United Airlines pilots and flight engineers were awarded $18.2 million after they were forced into retirement at the age of 60.

But recently this unsung hero of working Americans has been under siege from the Bush administration. Americans have an unrelenting need for this workplace warrior, but crippling funding cuts, a detrimental hiring freeze, and poor management threaten to debilitate the EEOC.

EEOC Early History: Hard-Earned Success

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought the EEOC into a fragile existence. Hamstrung with weak enforcement abilities, it faced a daunting caseload. Opening up shop in 1965, EEOC officials predicted a caseload of 2,000. Instead, the five-member board and 100-person staff fielded 8,852 complaints.

But despite these challenges, the EEOC managed not only to shape employment discrimination law, but also halt many flagrant cases of workplace discrimination.

One such victory occurred in 1965, when the EEOC took on the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, reversing workplace racial discrimination affecting 5,000 workers. The EEOC not only brought equal-pay to these workers, but ensured equal opportunity for professional advancement.

In the 1970s, sex discrimination became part of the agency’s ever-expanding mission, whereas earlier it had focused on racism. Unfortunately growing responsibilities were not matched by increased funding, leading to a predictable result: a case backlog of 94,700 complaints in 1977.

The EEOC responded to this crisis by enacting reforms under the Carter administration: adding new field offices, replacing unskilled workers with professionals, and creating a new priority system for cases. President Carter solidified these reforms through his Reorganization Plan of 1978 and by executive order.

The Reagan Shift: Reigning In the EEOC

President Ronald Reagan came into office seeking to fundamentally change the way government works, and he made no exception for the EEOC. Reagan’s commissioners pushed the EEOC to enact a bottom-up model. Instead of focusing on discriminatory company policies that could affect large groups of workers, the EEOC instead looked at complaints on a more individual basis.

Proponents of the strategy saw discrimination as a personal phenomenon—the result of prejudiced individuals, not prejudiced policies.

This paradigm shift weakened the effectiveness of the EEOC. Full investigations of frivolous cases sucked up resources, and the individualist approach diverted attention away from systemic discrimination based on race and sex.

The EEOC’s case backlog mounted yet again, doubling from 1979 to 1985. And at the same time, the EEOC’s staff shrunk by 20 percent.

Reagan’s successor, President George H.W. Bush, broadened the EEOC mission to include age and disability discrimination and permitted jury trials in all discrimination cases. But Bush Sr. did not back these policies with increases in EEOC funding. Instead, the heavy-lifting was left to the Clinton administration.

Clinton Era Reforms and Bush II Backsliding

Without substantially increasing funds for the EEOC, the Clinton White House enacted highly successful reforms. The agency junked Reagan’s individualist case approach, adopting in its place a systemic strategy and reforming the priority system for complaints of workplace discrimination. The agency’s new three-tiered system quickly and cheaply ferreted out cases that were either frivolous or outside the agency’s scope. As a result, the EEOC was put back on track, and its backlog dropped by 64 percent.

During this time the EEOC also stressed inter-agency cooperation and employee education, striving to both prevent discrimination and more quickly combat it.

But George W. Bush has failed to build on these Clinton-era reforms. Instead the Bush administration has pushed the EEOC backwards, embracing a wrong-headed Reaganesque approach.

The EEOC today lacks the funds and staff it needs to protect American workers. Since 2001 the EEOC has instituted a hiring freeze, which has cut its staff by 20 percent. The EEOC has also embraced misguided cost-saving measures. One such policy has been to establish national call centers to replace more costly regional offices. Today untrained operators—not skilled and experienced professionals— are our nation’s first responders to workplace discrimination.

And the neglect continues. Next year’s White House budget request represents a $4.2 million funding cut for the EEOC.

EEOC supporters have managed to fight back. District of Columbia Congressional representative Eleanor Holmes Norton and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) successfully modified the EEOC 2005 budget request and passed an amendment this year to keep national call center funding on a year-by-year basis, not cut it permanently, as favored by the Bush administration. And in 2005 EEOC supporters successfully forced the agency to submit quarterly spending and staffing reports, preventing the Bush administration from hiding deleterious policies.

In the Senate, Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) has redressed many damaging aspects of the White House’s EEOC budget request. Using her seat on the Senate Appropriation Committee, Mikulski has increased EEOC funding by $4 million, drained funds from the national call center initiative, and reversed the hiring freeze.

Yet the EEOC’s tenuous position under the Bush administration won’t change any time soon: Incoming EEOC Chair Naomi Churchill-Earp brings with her an abysmal track record. Churchill-Earp served as director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Equal Opportunity (NIH). While she investigated 174 discrimination complaints there, she failed to file a single case.

Churchill-Earp’s record was so poor that the NAACP took the unusual step of opposing her 2002 nomination as EEOC Vice Chair. Unable to get Senate approval, Bush was forced to install her as a recess appointment in 2003. If Churchill-Earp replicates her dismal NIH record at the EEOC, supporters will find it even harder to beat back the corrosive agenda of the Bush administration.

Workplace discrimination is not a relic of the past, but a clear and present danger facing Americans today, and future generations. Therefore the survival of the EEOC as a credible agency is not just a concern to its employees, politicians, or a small number of workers who face discrimination. Forces who seek to dismantle the EEOC are dismantling our nation’s founding principles: that all men and women are created equal, with the inalienable right to pursue their happiness through hard work and equal opportunity, and that discrimination must be combated when it occurs.

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Comments
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1. I have been an eeoc employee for almost 20 years. For the last 10 years I have also been a Local union president representing eeoc employees. I thought your article on the eeoc was a very good, albeit brief, summary of the obstacles that have confronted the eeoc. I would like, however, to call your attention to what I consider one oversight. That would be the role of the National Council of EEOC Locals, No. 216, AFGE, AFL-CIO, has played in the fight to prevent the more detrimental developments at the eeoc e.g. the hiring freeze, the call center, the eeoc reorganization. It is the National Council who brought these issues to the attention of others including Sen. Mikulski, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and others. We continue to fight the good fight. The background about Naomi Churchill-Earp was interesting and informative. We have already, in the short time since her appointment surmised that she would not likely be more progressive than Cari Dominguez. Thanks for a good article.

   — Michael E. Davidson - Nov 13, 02:09 PM - #
   
   

2. Excellent article. I have been an EEOC employee for the past 18 years. It is painful to see the mismanagement and lack of qualified Executive staff that the White House has put in to place to run the agency. Given the severity of discrimination in the work place today, you would think that it would be first and foremost that this and any agency be given the proper tools and leadership to enforce the laws passed by congress. Thanks again for such an informative letter.

   — David - Nov 14, 09:26 AM - #
   
   

3. Keith White – you’re partisan rhetoric is simply wrong and does not help the EEOC. Systemic investigations were very prominent in the days of Bush I, even in the later Reagan days. In was in Clinton’s second term that these investigations tetered off. This occured, in part, because of efforts to reduce the backlog. For anyone who has read the news lately, this program has been significantly revamped. This occured under chairs appointed by Bush II. Your partisan name-calling aside, an argument can be made that the EEOC
   s first priority should be to people who actually file complaints.

   Another myth is that the public is somehow at a loss by the elimination of a few field managers. This is occuring in Baltimore. The idea should be to get more positions and $ to investigate and litigation. To assist, there are a lot of positions and $ from headquarter that could go out to the field. In reality, under Democrats and Republicans, comparatively few charges have ever been fully investigated.

   You are correct to identify funding as a perpetual problem. Considering the amount of money and staff the EEOC historically spends in headquarters and other inefficiencies, I cannot honestly lay the blame on outsiders. The Chairs appointed by Clinton made promises and being Democrats, they had an excellant opportunity to increase efficiency by reorganizing – they failed. Chairwoman Castro actually beefed up headquarters and as her final bow spent money we didn’t have opening an office in Puerto Rico. Chair Dominguez took a very important step to put the EEOC on sounder financial footing and avoided lay-offs in the financial constraints posed by September 11th. But her reorg failed to prioritize headquarters reform. She did help justify the Washington field office by giving it jurisdiction outside of D.C. That tells me that the pressure in Washington to avoid significant self-reform must be enormous. We will see if Chair Churchill-Earp is up to the task.

   — John - Dec 4, 09:07 AM - #
   
   

4. t is the National Council who brought these issues to the attention of others including Sen. Mikulski, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and others. We continue to fight the good fight. The background about Naomi Churchill-Earp was interesting and informative. We have already, in the short time since her appointment surmised that she would not likely be more progressive than Cari Dominguez.

   — Jeremy JOnes - Jan 30, 02:39 PM - #