Press Releases

Today, Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittee Republican Leader Russ Fulcher (R-ID) sent a letter to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Charlotte A. Burrows to sound the alarm on the agency’s draft Strategic Plan, which misses opportunities for making EEOC more responsive to workers and employers.

In the letter, Foxx and Fulcher write: “We are concerned the Strategic Plan refuses to reinstate EEOC’s mediation and conciliation pilot programs, omits a specific plan to address EEOC’s current failure to return its employees to regular in-person work, and does not fully address issues highlighted by the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on EEOC’s charge intake and outreach efforts. Unfortunately, these are all troubling issues we have raised previously with EEOC. Without properly addressing these issues, the Strategic Plan will fail to meet its stated commitments to equal employment opportunity, accountability, and integrity.”

The Members continue: “Mediation and conciliation are vitally important functions of EEOC that lead to just and timely resolutions of cases for workers and employers in lieu of costly litigation. In July 2020, EEOC launched mediation and conciliation pilot programs.  However, within the first week of the Biden administration, EEOC discontinued these successful pilot programs with little explanation or justification.”

The Members also write: “As 2022 will soon draw to a close, EEOC has still failed to implement a plan to return its employees to the kind of onsite, in-person work that resembles its operations before the pandemic. The damage done by this unreasonable delay was conceded by Chair Burrows in testimony before the Committee.” 

Read the full letter here.

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