Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

War is the greatest threat to the working class people everywhere. The ongoing war on Iraqi people naturally has ugly repercussions on the American working class. And just like any other, this war has hurt women workers the most.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which is supposed to address issues of employment injustice in the US is burdened with responsibilities it cannot fulfill in time owing to financial crunch. Systematic reduction in budget for the lead enforcement agency in the area of workplace discrimination has grown to be matter of considerable concern.

EEOC currently has far too many unfilled positions. The agency has employed 20 percent fewer staff members over the past five years because of a hiring freeze. The White House has cut next year’s proposed budget by $4 million from $23 million this year. As an instance, the EEOC call center in Lawrence, Kansas which was funded with $4.9m recently because of its poor performance is handling only 20 percent of the calls from victim workers.

As a result, EEOC has 33,562 cases filed last year as backlog in job discrimination cases alone. Only in 2005, there have been additional 22,278 retaliation complaints from workers lodged with the EEOC. Just on the ground of job discrimination (without including race, age, gender, disability or sexual orientation complaints etc), there is a chance that EEOC will need to deal with nearly 48000 discrimination cases this year.

Statistically speaking, more than 24,000 callers a month speak with EEOC-trained Customer Service Representatives (CSRs). Through its Frequently Asked Questions posted on the EEOC's web page and an Interactive Voice Response telephone system available 24 hours a day, another 15,000 customers a month are making enquiries.

Understaffed and under-resourced, and with all the significant workloads the agency has, the current result of operations sheet shows a negative balance of $24 million.

What does it entail?
Unfortunately we live in times where nukes are considered more worthy than human lives. As a result, the fact that thousands of people are being systematically discriminated against, and their human rights are abused right here in the famed workplaces across the US, is simply lost on the ruling nexus that assumes it as a secondary priority in relation to its greater need to invade foreign lands to ‘teach’ different religions some cruel lessons.

Civil Rights Act of 1964 being signed. July 2, 1964

EEOC was not founded on impulsive decisions of some war mongering politicians attacking Vietnam. Nor was it based on sudden realization of some good men of this country’s political elites. EEOC was a necessary consequence of years of struggles waged by millions of discriminated people of the US who took to streets defying the legal orders and challenged the powerful to stop awhile and reflect critically. It was implemented during the time of turbulent sixties and it became part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On June 11, 1963, President John F Kennedy spoke as the conscience of a guilt-ridden country as he became the first president to favor the Civil Rights Act and work towards implementing it:

“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and it is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated . . . [O]ne hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet free from the bonds of injustice. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.
Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise. The events of Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently ignore them. We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It cannot be met with repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations on the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in Congress, in your state and local legislative body and, above all, in all of our daily lives. Next week I will ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.”

EEOC did not travel the difficult roads to confront institutionalized injustice for almost four decades now, as a part and parcel of the US administration. Quite the contrary, it was instituted essentially to oppose any administrative lapses in curbing discrimination at workplaces. What could be worse than assuming that the directions of EEOC then would depend on a bunch of war-mongering capitalists who preach widespread human rights violence throughout the globe, without blinking an eye towards the monumental domestic issues of human rights abuse at workplaces right inside the country?

Or even the fact that, despite all glorious trumpets heralding the “victory” in the cold war, harassments of workers in the US workplace have only been on the rise over the years, as the country has seen less of citizens’ welfare, and more of private business freedoms.

In most times, the critical question never asks for a simplified solution in the propagandist rhetoric of “less government”. Whereas less of a rule by a draconic bunch of liars is desirable, the more pressing need at this juncture is to demand more “social responsibility” from the rulers, than absolve them of their duty by shifting focus to conservative utopia of “more corporate governance” holding any key.