For the second year in a row, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says it received a record number of employment discrimination complaints. Whether this is good news or bad news depends on how you want to view it -- either more people are victims of discrimination, or more people are stepping up and enforcing their right to a non-discriminatory workplace.
The EEOC says it received 99,947 charges of employment discrimination and obtained $455.6 million in relief for the fiscal year 2011. Some other interesting statistics reported by the EEOC include:
- over five million individuals benefited from changes in employment policies or practices due to EEOC enforcement
- since President Barack Obama took office, the amount the EEOC was able to obtain in relief has gone up for three straight years
- the EEOC filed 300 lawsuits and its litigation efforts resulted in $91 million of relief
In addition, retaliation was once again the most popular violation, with 37,334 charges. Retaliation occurs when an employer takes negative action against an employee for complaining about discrimination. This charge is so common because it can be tacked onto almost any discrimination complaint.
For example, if an employee complains that he was passed over for a promotion due to his age, and then is subsequently fired, the employee may have a claim for both age discrimination and retaliation.
After retaliation, the most popular charge was race discrimination, followed by sex discrimination, disability discrimination, and age discrimination.
The EEOC announced their employment discrimination complaints statistics for the 2011 fiscal year. The EEOC was busy hearing a recording number of complaints and winning hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved employees.
Related Resources:
- Find a Chicago Employment Attorney (FindLaw)
- Discrimination and Harassment 101 (FindLaw)
- Filing a Complaint with the EEOC (FindLaw's Chicago Employment Law Blog)
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