Stats and Facts

• On March 16, 2006, lawmakers led by Ohio Democrat and former EEOC trial attorney Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Michigan Republican Thaddeus McCotter sent a letter signed by more than 100 House members calling the administration’s fiscal 2007 budget request for the agency—$4 million less than the current fiscal year—insufficient.
• EEOC likely will receive less money for fiscal year 2007.
• The EEOC’s own budget projections show that the backlog of private sector discrimination charges will rise from 33,562 in fiscal 2005 to 47, 516 in fiscal 2007.
• Despite the growing backlog, an EEOC hiring freeze has been in place since 2001 even though the agency has lost 20 percent of its workforce and will loose even more to retirements under a coming early out offer.
• In the summer of 2005, the EEOC approved an agency reorganization plan that called for the “thinning of management layers at field offices…” Before the approval, members of Congress expressed concern that the reorganization would lead to a decline in the number of charges sent for litigation. The EEOC ignored these concerns as well as similar concerns raised by civil rights organizations and frontline EEOC employees and implemented the plan on January 1, 2006.
• The EEOC refers to the backlogs of cases as “inventory.” However, these cases represent thousands of Americans who may have been harmed in the workplace by illegal discriminatory practices.
• In light of proposed personnel changes for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, it is extremely likely that the number of cases originating from federal sector employees will rise dramatically over the next few years.
• Given the reduced budget and exodus of retirees, EEOC will be ill equipped to protect America’s workers from illegal workplace discrimination.