The treatment of workplace discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was the focus of a hearing held on March 29 by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Service.
The EEOC has oversight over the equal employment opportunity (EEO) complaint process, which provides hearings and appeals for federal employees who believe they have been subject to discrimination in the workplace based on their race or sex. The EEOC operates an administrative court system, wherein administrative judges hold hearings on discrimination complaints. The EEOC is responsible for enforcing decisions delivered by those judges and for monitoring the employment practices of federal departments and agencies.
Rep. Albert Wynn (D-MD) urged the subcommittee to use its oversight role “to ensure that this process serves federal employees fairly and efficiently,” adding that the EEO process “is underfunded, is ineffective, has a serious backlog, and is often not taken seriously by the organizations it monitors.”
Rep. Wynn cited a report by the General Accounting Office, which found that the EEOC’s efforts to collect information from departments and agencies are inadequate. “The data do not provide a sound basis for decisionmakers, program managers, and the EEOC to understand the nature and extent of workplace conflict,” he said.
A task force designed to improve the EEO process has been formed by the Clinton Administration’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government. As part of the reinventing government initiative, the task force is working with the EEOC to streamline the complaint process. Rep. Wynn said the task force “will review and recommend approaches to improve the type and quality of data collected, the method of collection, the accuracy and reliability of the data, and the timeliness and availability of the data.”
Carlton Hadden of the EEOC said his agency is working to improve the EEO complaint process. “Reform was clearly needed because of the significant increases in hearings and appeals in recent years,” he acknowledged, adding: “It is a fact that federal employees wait too long for their complaints to be processed at almost every stage of the federal EEO complaint process.” He said changes are being made “to ensure that the federal government is a model employer.”
However, Gerald Reed of Blacks in Government called for a complete overhaul of the EEOC. “Congress should totally reinvent the EEOC and make it responsive and accountable to regulatory timelines,” he said. Mr. Reed criticized much of the EEO system, highlighting the EEOC’s lack of enforcement authority and the length of time workers are required to wait for resolution of their complaints. “Justice deferred is justice denied,” he said.
Mediation Several witnesses spoke in favor of mediation programs designed to resolve complaints before they are submitted to the EEOC administrative courts. Cynthia Hallberlin of the United States Postal Service said her department’s program “is designed to be fast—so that mediation takes place early enough in the conflict to maximize the parties’ ability to reach a resolution.”
Roger Blanchard of the Air Force said his department’s mediation program uses “a neutral third party to arrive at a mutually acceptable resolution to disputes.” He compared the approach to the EEO process, saying that on average, each formal EEO complaint requires 321 labor hours for processing, while a mediated complaint averages 45 labor hours. Adjudication of a formal EEO complaint costs $16,372 on average, while the estimated cost of a mediated complaint is $1,795.
