By Deryn Sumner, December 13, 2017
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently issued its Performance and Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2017. You can find the complete report here: https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/plan/upload/2017par.pdf
The bulk of the report focuses on the efforts made by the EEOC on obtaining relief for victims of discrimination in the private sector and before state and local governments. According to the report, the EEOC secured $484 million in monetary relief in fiscal year 2017, and $86 million in monetary relief for federal government employees and applicants. The report also referenced the reduction in pending private sector charges in what the Acting Chair of the EEOC diplomatically called a “resource-constrained environment.” The report also discusses advances in modernizing the private sector charge processing process by moving more aspects of the charge processing process to online. To that I can only offer my congratulations, and a hope that the EEOC will move towards modernizing more of the federal sector process in 2018 and beyond, including allowing complainants and their representatives access to the FedSEP (Federal Sector EEO Portal)system.
In terms of the federal sector process, the EEOC offers the following statistics for fiscal year 2017:
- The EEOC resolved 4,284 appeals of agency decisions, including 85% of appeals that were more than 500 days old at the beginning of the fiscal year;
- The age of those cases still pending at the Office of Federal Operations was reduced by 13.6%;
- The EEOC categorized 100% of the pending appellate case inventory and 98.2% of new inventory into a new case management system;
- With regards to cases pending at the hearing stage, the EEOC asserts that 70.1% of these cases had an initial status conference in FY 2017. The Commission noted that this metric will not reach 100% as not all cases require initial status conferences;
- The Commission updated and released guidance including A Guide to Assist Federal Agencies to Provide Personal Assistance Services; Bathroom/Facility Access and Transgender Employees; and Proposed Enforcement Guidance on Harassment that Creates a Hostile Work Environment;
- Finally, the EEOC issued 68 findings of discrimination (note, this refers to decisions from the Commission’s Office of Federal Operations, not initial decisions issued by administrative judges).
I appreciate the EEOC’s transparency to federal government employees and the federal taxpayer as to its progress on efforts to eradicate workplace discrimination. [email protected]
