The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission failed to act last year on more than 200 age discrimination cases before the statute of limitations expired, EEOC Chairman Clarence Thomas told a hostile congressional hearing on Monday, a year after he had promised to improve the agency’s performance.
“It is troubling that . . . the agency charged with protecting victims of age discrimination has continued to allow over 200 age discrimination charges to die of old age,” said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), chairman of the employment subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee.
Thomas, defending his leadership of the agency, said he had been the victim of two years of “terribly disturbing” harassment by Congress. Legislators refuse to give the EEOC enough money to do its job, he said, and then complain when it encounters problems.
“We are doing everything we can to ensure that charging parties do not lose their rights . . . I want the legislative branch to leave the agency alone to gets its house in order,” Thomas said.
The subcommittee’s ire at the EEOC was heightened by the testimony of Lynn Bruner, the agency’s district director in St. Louis, who said the agency’s top management has “defamed my character and standing as a government official.”
Bruner said the agency is trying to demote her because she criticized Thomas and because she testified last year before a Senate committee about the mishandling of age discrimination cases.
“My superiors decided to make me the scapegoat for what was a nationwide problem for failure to process (age discrimination) cases,” Bruner said. The EEOC has ordered Bruner removed from the Senior Executive Service, the elite corps of top civil service managers and demoted from her job as district director. The demotion Toldhas been halted pending an investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that considers grievances of government workers.
Monday’s hearing was the latest skirmish in an increasingly bitter battle between Thomas and his critics in Congress.
The EEOC became the center of controversy in 1987 and 1988 amid revelations that thousands of older workers were denied opportunities to press lawsuits in age discrimination cases. The EEOC failed to act on their complaints before the two-year deadline on lawsuits expired.
An angry Congress castigated the agency for the problem and passed a special law extending the right to file suit. Persons who had filed complaints with the EEOC between Jan. 1, 1984, and April 7, 1988, but whose cases may have been mishandled, were permitted to bring lawsuits until Sept. 28, 1989.
Notified Plaintiffs
More than 10,000 persons were notified that under the new law that they would be given the right to sue their former employers.
Nevertheless, Thomas acknowledged Monday that his agency is still unable to deal with all its age discrimination cases before deadlines expire. Since last April, the two-year filing period has expired for 220 cases without action by the EEOC. “Unacceptable reasons include case tracking problems, staffing problems, heavy workload and delays by uncooperative respondents,” he told the subcommittee. He noted, however, that before the deadline expired, the agency realized it was unable to complete work on these cases and notified the plaintiffs that they still could file their own private lawsuits before time elapsed.
Thomas complained bitterly after the hearing that Congress was contributing to the agency’s difficulties by refusing to provide it with an adequate budget. “How do they expect me to drive to New York on a half a tank of gas?” he said, noting that the EEOC asked for $194 million for this fiscal year, but received $180 million.
Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park), said Congress is “very upset” about the mishandling of age-related cases. The EEOC “keeps doing the same thing,” he said in an interview after the hearing. “Maybe we need to set up a special division of the agency that deals exclusively with age cases,” he said.
Martinez and Lantos were highly critical of the EEOC’s decision to demote Bruner, calling it an act of retaliation.
Bruner, who has worked for the EEOC for 17 years, said, “Throughout all this time, I have been a team player and a loyal subordinate. I would never speak out publicly against my superiors unless I firmly believed that there was some large principle at stake.”
Press Contact Criticized
On June 21, a day before leaving for Washington to testify at a Senate hearing, Bruner was told by EEOC headquarters to stay in her office until 7 p.m. to receive a facsimile transmission of her mid-year review. The report, prepared by Jacquelyn Shelton, director of Western field operations, gave Bruner a negative evaluation, criticized her for speaking to the press about age discrimination cases and “placing the chairman in a negative light.”
Shelton, under intense questioning by committee members, said Bruner should have told headquarters that she was going to talk to the press.
“We are living in the U.S., not the Soviet Union,” Lantos replied. “Even in the Soviet Union, with glasnost, she can express her views.”
Thomas said he was unaware of the contents of Shelton’s report, but did not condone the criticism of her.