Civil Rights Groups Voice Concern Over Proposed Change to EEO-1 Form
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 6/21/2004
Several leading civil rights groups in June advised the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission not to consider adopting changes to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1 form), saying the changes could compromise the enforcement of anti-discrimination policies.The EEOC was scheduled to consider two major alterations to the EEO-1 form on June 4, but the agency canceled the meeting and so far has not announced plans to finalize adoption of the changes.
The EEO-1 form is used to gather important information on employees throughout the country, and is necessary for civil rights enforcement in the work place. More specifically, the form's collection of racial and ethnic data becomes essential to the Commission's critical function to monitor allegations of discrimination under Title VII.
Civil rights advocates say that the EEOC's proposed changes could be especially harmful to Latinos. One change states that if a person identifies as Hispanic or Latino, the employer will be asked to report only the employee's ethnicity and not his or her race.
Several civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, contest that the EEOC's proposal could present inaccuracies in the monitoring of discrimination that occurs based on ethnicity and race, because only one of the two categories would be counted. Specifically, the proposed changes would not recognize a Latino worker who also identified in a racial category outside of Hispanic or Latino.
Another change to the form states that if a person self-identifies with more than one race, the employer will be asked to report him or her only in the "Two or More Races" category and not in any other racial category.
Advocacy groups are concerned that the default category of "two or more races" could dilute "the numbers of racial minorities in the underlying pool and ultimately render such analyses useless," according to a letter of concern sent to EEOC commissioners.
"Our goal is to make sure that there is an accurate count in the racial and ethnic breakdown of an employer's workforce," said Jocelyn Frye, director of legal and public policy at the National Partnership for Women & Families. "The 'two or more races' category proposed by the EEOC, as currently crafted, would undermine this objective. Moreover, it is unclear how many employees would be affected by this change."
LCCR, in conjunction with several other groups, concur that the suggested modifications could create barriers in individuals' efforts to seek justice.
