On March 19, 2014
at about 1:45 PM the Equal Employment Officer (EEO) of one of the 10 largest
California state departments held a closed door meeting with managers. During that meeting he stated:
"Most of the
claims filed with my office are not discrimination... Nationally about 3-5% of
these types of claims are proven."
We can fact check this
claim using data supplied by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (U.S. EEOC), for the years 1997 to 2014 (available here). The U.S. EEOC classifies closed cases one of
eight ways as listed below in the table (click here for full definitions, click here to retrieve a spreadsheet used to conduct the calculations summarized
in the table below).
Category
|
Favors
|
SUM, 1997-2014
|
Settlements
|
Employee
|
143,976
|
Withdrawals w/Benefits
|
Employee
|
78,258
|
Administrative Closures
|
Ambiguous
|
321,540
|
No Reasonable Cause
|
Employer
|
1,030,567
|
Reasonable Cause
|
Employee
|
87,795
|
Successful Conciliations
|
Employee
|
25,679
|
Unsuccessful Conciliations
|
Employee
|
62,116
|
Merit Resolutions
|
Employee
|
310,029
|
0
|
||
SUM, ratable (Excludes Admin.)
|
1,738,420
|
|
Discrimination
|
40.7%
|
|
NO Discrimination
|
59.3%
|
Of the 1.7 million
cases investigated by the U.S. EEOC between 1997 and 2014, almost 41% either
found discrimination occurred, or likely occurred!
- This is ten times greater than the amount claimed by the EEO officer.
- This is an example of why it is important to question the "facts" claimed by individuals.
Sadly,
although we can establish the magnitude of the EEO officer's error, many and
perhaps all of the 20 managers who attend the meeting on March 19, 2014 left
thinking nearly all claims of discrimination at their workplace are without
merit. Statistically speaking, nothing
could be further from the truth.
One can't help but wonder if closed door meetings such as this, where apparently the EEO officer is signaling his skepticism, would actually serve to embolden managerial level discrimination? We can't rule out the possibility.
One can't help but wonder if closed door meetings such as this, where apparently the EEO officer is signaling his skepticism, would actually serve to embolden managerial level discrimination? We can't rule out the possibility.
Please cite this
blog as: Nelson, Eric L. (2015). Fact
Checking an EEO Officer's Claim. Trends
in State Work, http://trendsinstatework.blogspot.com/2015/05/fact-checking-eeo-officers-claim.html