Council Meeting

Held Wednesday, January 11, 2011

Host: Ms. Delia Johnson

INTRODUCTION

Ms. Delia L. Johnson, Co-Chair of the Council and Director, Office of Civil Rights for International Broadcasting Bureau, opened the meeting with a few remarks and then asked the attendees to give their names, agencies, and positions.

Jorge Ponce, Co-Chair of the Council, announced the MSPB decision to reinstate Teresa Chambers as Chief of the U.S. Park Service at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Chief Chambers was fired in 2003 for talking to a Washington Post reporter, and the MSPB ruled in her favor as a classic act of retaliation against a whistleblower. Mr. Ponce praised Chief Chambers’ perseverance in litigating a 7-year battle, and pointed out the sacrifices that she and her family endured to pay for attorney’s fees in a city where they range from $350 to $500 per hour. Like Professor Anita Faye Hill and Lilly Ledbetter did in the civil rights arena, Chief Chambers advanced the torch of progress for whistleblower protections. We owe all of them a huge debt of gratitude.

DISCUSSION ABOUT PENDING EEO MATTERS BY COUNCIL MEMBERS

A Council member from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation explained how all her Special Emphasis Program Managers have been given an MD-715 role.  She wants to ensure that actions and strategies under these programs are targeted to address the barriers that may exist.   She is considering how she can share this approach with other council members.

A Council member from the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury indicated that they had completed the state-of-EEO briefing recently with the Secretary. While the diversity of the Department looked great, it was the IRS that carried the Department. For example, the IRS Revenue Officer position had the highest representation of Hispanics government-wide. In addition, the diversity at IRS is enviable because it has regional offices almost everywhere in the U.S. She described an in-house statistical system called Workforce Analytics that spews out all kinds of statistics at a moment’s notice – even more sophisticated ones than those required for the MD-715 report. She said that Council members who are willing to get a briefing on the Workforce Analytics can make arrangements with Treasury, and they can even purchase it – although she warned that it was a bit pricy. Moving on to a different subject, she shared her frustration at her inability to recruit easily EEOC or MSPB attorneys for EEO vacancies because they served under excepted appointments. Co-Chair Ponce responded that an easy solution was to consider other applicants without these limitations. He said that selecting officials had to dispel the myth that attorneys, especially those from EEOC and MSPB, were the only ones who could handle EEO jobs. He indicated how he had worked at Treasury’s Office of Equal Opportunity Program in the past, and how he and other EEO Managers drafted final agency decisions that were of equal or better quality than those drafted by most attorneys on the staff. So, Co-Chair Ponce urged that the name of the game was to embrace diversity to the fullest when recruiting for vacancies, especially for EEO ones where EEO professionals had to walk the talk that they preached to managers. The Council member also indicated that Treasury was trying to use Part J to prepare its plan for increasing the employment of people with disabilities – that is due to OPM on March 8, 2011, per Executive Order 13548. She stated that Treasury wants to resurvey its workforce for disability purposes, but they were forced to wait until the National Finance Center coded the newly updated SF-256 form.

A Council member indicated that she almost applied to an EEO job in the past whose main responsibility was to host monthly parties. Upon further questioning and surprise – no one had heard of such jobs before -- she clarified that by parties, she meant commemorative programs. Co-Chair Ponce responded that commemorative programs could not be equated with parties. In fact, he indicated that these programs were required by specific laws and White House proclamations. While he understands the frustration expressed by some individuals who would like to allocate more resources to recruitment initiatives, he said that the purpose of these programs was to educate and recognize the contributions that these EEO groups have made “annually.” Co-Chair Ponce pointed out that it is just as important to create a welcoming work environment for all EEO groups at federal agencies, as it is to recruit them. To do otherwise would result in what Dr. Roosevelt Thomas calls “the revolving-door” policy; for every applicant hired, three leave. Commemorative programs are a way for federal agencies to demonstrate to their employees that they care about the contributions that all EEO groups make.

A Council member from the FDIC announced that his agency had enacted a policy in October of 2010 which protects FDIC employees from discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identiy and gender expression. He explained that they had decided to take these steps partly in light of the 2008 decision in Schroer v. Billington – where a federal judge from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Library of Congress had illegally discriminated against a Special Forces veteran after withdrawing an employment offer because Schroer announced her intention to transition from a male to a female. The court held that an employment decision based on “sexual stereotyping,” and in response to a decision to transition from male to female, violated Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination. In 2011 and 2012, the FDIC will also be providing mandatory diversity training for all its managers on gender identity and gender expression. The Council member explained that in the FDIC policy, the term “gender identity or expression” is defined as “a gender-related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior of an individual, regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth.” In the upcoming mandatory training for managers, FDIC has separate definitions for “gender identity” and “gender expression.” Gender identity, distinct from the term sexual orientation, refers to a person’s innate, deeply felt psychological sense of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s body or designated sex at birth (the sex originally listed on a person’s birth certificate). Gender expression refers to all of a person’s external characteristics and behaviors —such as dress, grooming, mannerisms, speech patterns and social interactions —that are socially identified with a particular gender. Social or cultural norms can vary widely and some characteristics that may be accepted as masculine, feminine or neutral in one culture may not be assessed similarly in another. A person’s gender expression may also be referred to as his or her gender presentation.

A Council member from NASA stated that her agency was developing a procedure to process discrimination complaints based on sexual orientation and gender identity. She indicated that her office had referred to the policy and procedural guidance from the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s procedures, among other agencies, to draft NASA’s procedures.

A Council member indicated that minorities are applying for federal vacancies and making the best-qualified lists, but they are not getting selected. The problem is most challenging at the SES level. A Council member averred that this was most discouraging after considering that there were fewer vacancies at the SES level, and the competition was stiffer. If federal agencies are playing games with these vacancies, it would be impossible to increase the minority representation at the SES level. Co-Chair Delia Johnson stated that one of the problems contributing to this challenge is the fact that most SES vacancies are wired even before they are advertised. Thus, the application process is a scam, and is demoralizing to applicants and managers trying to diversify their workforce. Another Council member stated that some federal agencies had online application system where if the applicants did not utilize the right buzz words, they were not referred for interviews. Thus, applicants are getting selected for the wrong reasons – mainly, for using the right buzz words, instead of their qualifications. Another Council member recommended that perhaps it was time to resurrect an old practice where best-qualified lists were referred to the EEO Offices before and after the selections were made.