Since 1966, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has required private sector employers with at least 100 employees, as well as federal contractors with at least 50 workers, to submit annual data regarding the demographics of their workforce. Recently, the EEOC’s Republican majority voted 2-1 to rescind this requirement, according to a report from the Associated Press.
During a hearing ahead of the vote, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said these reporting requirements “may promote racial stereotyping at work” and/or “encourage employers to engage in discrimination.” In contrast, Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democrat on the EEOC, said that the dismissal of this six-decades-long process will “turn back time to a period before the civil rights movement, kneecapping [the commission’s] ability to protect workers.”
The requirement in question is the annual EEO-1 form, which asks employers to report on the gender and race of their employees in various job categories, ranging from “executive/senior level officials and managers” to “laborers” and “service workers.” This data, which covers some 50 million employees and 73,000 employers across the country, has been used to track the representation of women and racial minorities in the country’s workforce, uncover discrimination patterns, and guide EEOC priorities and investigations.
According to the EEOC’s proposal, these requirements “are inconsistent with EEO law because they may encourage employers to discriminate against employees who are not considered ‘minorities,’ may promote racial stereotyping, and may encourage employers to engage in discrimination to avoid potential EEOC enforcement actions or to address perceived inequitable outcomes.”
Although the EEOC proposal would remove the reporting requirement, Lucas says the commission could still demand data in the course of its investigations.