Federal Agency Charges Staffing Company Stopped Giving Work to Employee Because He Filed EEOC Charge

Hire Dynamics, LLC, a major staffing and professional recruitment company headquartered in Duluth, Ga., violated federal law by retaliating against an employee because he filed a discrimination charge, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it filed today.

According to the EEOC's lawsuit, the employee was assigned to one of Hire Dynamics' clients as a quality auditor. The employee was suspended for a week for missing one day of work, after which he filed a discrimination charge against the company. After that, the EEOC said, he was never given any further job assignments or opportunities as retaliation.

Retaliation for filing a discrimination charge is prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (Case Number 1:13-cv-01317) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. As part of the suit, the EEOC is seeking back pay and compensatory and punitive damages, as well as injunctive relief prohibiting the company from engaging in any further such retaliatory practices.

"When an employee files a discrimination charge with the EEOC, an employer has no right to punish him for exercising his rights," said EEOC District Director Bernice Williams Kimbrough. "In today's employment climate, the importance of protecting workers who utilize the charge filing process is greater than ever."

Eliminating policies and practices that discourage or prohibit individuals from exercising their rights under employment discrimination statutes, or that impede the EEOC's investigative or enforcement efforts, is one of six national priorities identified by the EEOC's Strategic Enforcement Plan.

Source: EEOC

This information is intended to be educational and should not be considered legal advice on any specific matter.

EEOC Reports Nearly 100,000 Job Bias Charges in Fiscal Year 2012

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced that it received 99,412 private sector workplace discrimination charges during fiscal year 2012, down slightly from the previous year. The year-end data also show that retaliation (37,836), race (33,512) and sex discrimination (30,356), which includes allegations of sexual harassment and pregnancy were, respectively, the most frequently filed charges. The fiscal year runs Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. The fiscal year 2012 enforcement and litigation statistics, which include trend data, are available on the EEOC's website at http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/index.cfm.

Additionally, the EEOC achieved a second consecutive year of a significant reduction in the charge inventory, something not seen since fiscal year 2002. Due to a concerted effort, the EEOC reduced the pending inventory of private sector charges by 10 percent from fiscal year 2011, bringing the inventory level to 70,312. This inventory reduction is the second consecutive decrease of almost ten percent in charge inventory. Also this fiscal year, the agency obtained the largest amount of monetary recovery from private sector and state and local government employers through its administrative process - $365.4 million.

In fiscal year 2012, the EEOC filed 122 lawsuits including 86 individual suits, 26 multiple-victim suits (with fewer than 20 victims) and 10 systemic suits. The EEOC's legal staff resolved 254 lawsuits for a total monetary recovery of $44.2 million.

EEOC also continued its emphasis on eliminating systemic patterns of discrimination in the workplace. In fiscal year 2012, EEOC completed 240 systemic investigations which in part resulted in 46 settlements or conciliation agreements. These settlements, achieved without litigation, secured 36.2 million dollars for the victims of unlawful discrimination.

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Source: EEOC

This information is intended to be educational and should not be considered legal advice on any specific matter.

EEOC Makes State Charge Data Available Online

Source:  EEOC

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has made private sector workplace discrimination charge statistics for each of the nation’s 50 states and U.S. Territories available on-line.

The data provides a look at EEOC charge receipts, broken down by the basis of discrimination, as well as the percent of total state and national charges. The state data tables are available online at http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges_by_state.cfm.

The EEOC will update the state data when new charge statistics are available each fiscal year.