More Than $372 Million Recovered In Workplace Discrimination Claims

Despite staffing cuts, hiring freezes and sequestration woes, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recovered a record $372.1 million for its private sector workplace discrimination charges — $6.7 million more than it recovered the year prior.

The EEOC enforces federal anti-discrimination in employment laws. According to the EEOC’s Fiscal Year 2013 Performance and Accountability Report (PAR), the EEOC received a 93,727 private sector discrimination charges. Although some 6,000 less than the prior three years, it still ranks among the agency’s top five.

The EEOC has continued to focus on systemic enforcement, targeting unlawful patterns, practices or policies which broadly impact an industry, profession, company or geographic area. Systemic practices include discriminatory barriers in recruitment and hiring; discriminatory restricted access to management training programs and to high level jobs; exclusion of qualified women from traditionally male dominated fields of work; unlawful pre-employment inquiries aimed at detecting disabilities; and age discrimination by reductions in a workforce.

The EEOC reports 300 systemic investigations in fiscal 2013 resulting in 63 settlements or conciliation agreements totaling some $40 million. Agency lawsuits filed for systemic enforcement represented over 20 percent of all active suits in that 2013, the largest proportion since tracking started in 2006. The EEOC also obtained more than $160.9 million in monetary benefits for complaining employees through mediation resolutions, the second highest level in the agency’s history.

If you as employer don’t wish to contribute to any further groundbreaking statistics, we can help. For more information concerning California or federal employment laws, contact one of our attorneys Tim Bowles or Cindy Bamforth.