EEO Executive Council Meeting
Held Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Ms. Delia L. Johnson, Co-Chair 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 name, agency, and position. She thanked Bonita White, Director, EEO Programs, DHHS, for sponsoring this meeting. She then turned the rostrum over to Jorge Ponce, Co-Chair, to address the Council's concerns and introduce the guest speaker, Stuart J. Ishimaru, Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Following are the documents that were distributed: Federal
Sector Investigations Report – Time and Cost Analysis from EEOC (see http://www.eeoc.gov/federal/timeandcost.html),
and a July 7, 2004 letter from EEOC in response to a previous Council letter on
the MD-715 Instructions. See MD
715 Instructions Letter 04.
JORGE PONCE
Mr. Jorge Ponce provided Commissioner Ishimaru with the same summary of the latest activities of the Council that he provided Vice Chair Earp at the June 22, 2004 meeting.
Citing the July 7, 2004 letter, Mr. Ponce indicated that EEOC had convened a work group of representative from a number of agencies to design a uniform form to collect applicant flow data. He asked the Council members if EEOC had contacted any of them, and they indicated that they had not been contacted. Next, Mr. Ponce stated that EEOC had mentioned that the PATCO categories were outdated, overly broad and too imprecise to allow the level of analysis desired. If this is what the EEOC staff thought, them Mr. Ponce wondered why did EEOC include the Office of Personnel Management in the Consortium to construct the Census 2000 Special EEO File. Mr. Ponce explained that it would be difficult to conduct retroactive studies between reports containing the PATCOB categories and those having the new nine occupational categories. Whereas EEOC stated that its seven race and national origin categories were the minimum categories set fort by the Office of Management and Budget in its Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, Mr. Ponce indicated that OMB allowed for the collection of ethnic and racial categories separately. Thus, Mr. Ponce pointed out that many Council members, including organizations in the private sector, were concerned that including Hispanics as a racial category would lead to an undercount of this group.
Mr. Ponce stated that because of the concerns raised by Council members regarding MD-715 and the MD-715 Instructions, EEOC should postpone the January 30, 2005 due date indefinitely. This will provide EEOC additional time to examine more carefully the issues raised by stakeholders in the public and private sectors.
Commissioner Ishimaru thanked Mr. Ponce for the summary, and indicated that he
preferred an interactive presentation rather than a formal one.
He stated that it was an honor to have been appointed by a Republican President, and to be the sole Democrat at EEOC.
He said that he had met with Mr. Ponce, Ms. Johnson, and other affinity groups in the past, and he found these meetings to be very useful to educate him on important issues facing the federal sector.
Following is a list of the issues that Commissioner Ishimaru addressed.
He stated that EEOC was interested in looking at the possibility of reforming the complaints process in the federal sector. He hopes that in the next months, EEOC will be able to generate a consensus document.
Mr. Ponce pointed that Vice Chair Earp had indicated at the June 22, 2004 meeting that the federal sector reform would be on hold until after the 2004 Presidential election. Thus, he wanted to know if there had been a change of mind at EEOC. Moreover, Mr. Ponce indicated that the Council and a coalition of civil rights stakeholders had submitted to EEOC Chair Dominguez, on March 24, 2003, a 7-step proposal to improve the complaints process in the federal sector.
Ms. Johnson stated that EEOC should give the 1999 revisions more time to play out, rather than introducing new reforms to the complaints process.
Commissioner Ishimaru clarified that there had not been a change in policy. Instead, he said that EEOC welcomed any ideas from stakeholders at any time on how to improve the complaints process in the federal sector. He doubted that the final document would be issued before the November 2004 election.
He acknowledged that other stakeholders, including several ones in the private sector, were concerned about the RNO category that EEOC had adopted for Hispanics. As a result of these concerns, Chair Dominguez had to postpone the last meeting with private sector groups.
He expressed his own reservations about the Hispanic category, as currently drafted.
He wondered whether it was possible to retain the same quality of service with lower-graded federal employees or with private contractors. Currently, GS-12 and GS-13 EEOC employees answer EEO-related questions in the federal sector. However, he mentioned that while EEOC will issue a final contract award for a call center later in the month, it will be run as a pilot program.
A Council member stated that her agency had had a bad experience with setting up its own call center and staffing it with private contractors. The problems ranged with not having sufficient quality control checks; employees having poor knowledge of the subject matter; privacy concerns; and providing answers that were not consistent with the institutional culture.
Ms. Eates, who works for Commissioner Ishimaru, stated that there was a subsequent memo to the March 25, 2004 one that allowed discovery for hearing requests that EEOC had coded in the yellow category (summary judgment).
He indicated that EEOC is very concerned about this issue, and its staff is doing further research on it.
A Council member stated that EEOC should enforce better the regulation regarding the reporting authority of EEO Directors. Mr. Ponce indicated that EEOC could report annually to Congress on those agencies that were not abiding by this regulation.
Another Council member pointed out that EEO Director at the State Department reported to the agency head. In addition, this office has its own attorney advisors, which minimized the involvement by the Office of General Counsel.