Thread: Charlotte EEOC: Hispanic Discrimination Complaints Up

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Charlotte EEOC: Hispanic Discrimination Complaints Up
AP

(03/14/06 -- CHARLOTTE) - Amid an increasingly heated debate over the effect of illegal immigration on North Carolina jobs, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saw a 23 percent rise last year in discrimination charges filed by Hispanics, officials said Tuesday.
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Send us news tips | Desktop Alert | ABC11 AccuWeather | Pinpoint Traffic Discrimination occurs in "everything from hiring to terms and conditions of employment," said Reuben Daniels, district director for a Charlotte-based EEOC that oversees all of North Carolina and most of Virginia and South Carolina. "We do see a number of cases involving English-only rules, imposing restrictions on the use of Spanish."

Daniels spoke with reporters during a visit by EEOC Chair Cari M. Dominguez. Dominguez and Daniels recently oversaw a restructuring of regional offices that they said eliminated some management jobs and increased the number of agents and investigators in the field. A total of 116 EEOC employees, 46 of them investigators, now report to Charlotte from five local offices.

One hundred fifty-six North Carolina Hispanics filed discrimination charges through EEOC in the year that ended Sept. 30, Daniels' office said. That was up from 126 such complaints in the previous 12 months.

Of the 233 allegations contained in the fiscal 2005 charges, 106 charged discrimination on the basis of national origin, while 41 alleged retaliatory action by an employer after a worker tried to assert his or her rights.

Complaints by Hispanic workers make up the bulk of the national-origin discrimination charges fielded by his office, Daniels said.

Nationally, Dominguez said, EEOC fielded about 80,000 allegations in the last fiscal year. About 35 percent dealt with race discrimination and 35 percent alleged gender discrimination.

The EEOC officials said they try to stay out of the debate over illegal immigrants in the workplace. It is up to employers to check documentation and ensure workers are in the United States legally, Daniels and Dominguez said. Once those employees are in the workplace, they said, they must not be discriminated against.

"I view these as very different issues," Daniels said. "We're really focused on employment. When people are here and part of the workforce, they're entitled to fair treatment."

Dominguez noted that EEOC's role has evolved since the commission was created following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the heyday of the civil rights movement, she said, most employment discrimination complaints dealt with discrimination against blacks. In the 1970s and 1980s, as more women moved into the workplace, gender discrimination complaints became more frequent. Complaints of age discrimination, sexual harassment and bias against the disabled became more common in the 1990s and this decade has seen a surge in complaints of bias against Arab-Americans and religious discrimination following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Dominguez and Daniels said about one of every five complaints filed is ultimately judged to have merit, a process that involves careful, nuanced judgments about what is discrimination and what is a legitimate business decision.

"There are very few bright lines in this line of work," Daniels said.

"We do see a number of cases involving English-only rules, imposing restrictions on the use of Spanish."

How is that a legitimate complaint? It would certainly be a legitimate business decison for any company doing business in the United States to require the use of English only on the job. A single common language is necessary for efficient, and safe, operations. If Hispanics are insisting on the use Spanish on the job, it is because they are trying to shut out non-Spanish speaking workers. That would be discrimination.