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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a government entity with the aim to eliminate discrimination from America’s workplaces. “Discrimination” is when the employer acts to cause some disadvantage to an employee or potential employee, based on the employee’s race, gender, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, and / or sex. These factors of discrimination are called “immutable characteristics,” because a person is born with them and cannot change them. In addition, these factors in no way hinder the employee’s ability to perform the essential tasks of his or her job. In the early 1960’s, social changes, television, and the protest in Birmingham, Alabama, led to what is known as the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. made the famous “I Have a Dream” speech in a march in Washington. Due to these protests and the unrest felt by the people, President Kennedy sent the first civil rights bill to Congress. This bill would eventually evolve into the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC was created by the Civil Rights Act, but was given only limited power to punish violating employers. However, in 1972, Congress gave the EEOC the authority to sue employers. The EEOC was no longer a “toothless tiger.” From then on, the EEOC has aggressively investigated and gone after employers who are accused of engaging in discriminatory practices. The EEOC succeeded in taking cases all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1978, President Carter gave the EEOC even more power. However, in the 1980s, political leadership wanted the EEOC to give up those cases in which large classes of discriminated individuals were represented. Instead, EEOC was increasingly limited to those cases where an individual employee comes down to the local EEOC office and complains of discrimination. The 1990s saw the passage of the important American with Disabilities Act. The EEOC continued to enforce the new acts through Supreme Court cases. The EEOC also increased its efforts to educate the public about discrimination in the workplace. Nowadays, the EEOC continues to remain a positive force in ridding our workplaces of sometimes difficult-to-notice discrimination. |
