Discrimination against racial minorities in the federal government is rampant, and recent efforts to improve equal opportunity in the workforce don't go far enough, according to a new report from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The report, released at an NAACP summit meeting last week, is the second in a series on employment discrimination and abuses in the federal workplace. It scrutinizes discrimination complaints at nine federal agencies and examines attempts to reform the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint process.
More than 300 agency directors, federal employees and union representatives attended the summit. "The mere fact that we had the agencies and the employees together was a good sign," said Leroy W. Warren, chairman of the NAACP's federal sector task force. He also noted that a review of Office of Personnel Management employment data showed some slight upward mobility for racial minorities during the 1990s.
Nevertheless, the report argued that discrimination at federal agencies is perpetuated by an ineffective EEOC and reinvention efforts that are "anti-civil rights and anti-affirmative action."
Budgetary shortcomings and internal problems have left the EEOC "in shambles, deep troubles, and in need of drastic reforms," Warren said.
While EEOC Chairwoman Ida Castro has made some marked improvements at the agency, much remains to be done to dispel the image of EEOC staffers as "tools of management," the NAACP's report said.
At some agencies, Office of General Counsel attorneys both defend the agency in EEO cases and have the authority to dismiss such cases. The EEO program needs to be restructured to eliminate such conflicts of interest, the report said.
The EEOC's recent decision to eliminate agencies' power to make final decisions in discrimination cases that are being heard by EEOC judges is a good start, Warren said. But without proper funding, the EEOC can't continue to make real changes, he said.
The report dismissed the Clinton administration's recent attempt to improve the federal sector EEO process as a "ploy to delay systematic changes to stop discrimination in the federal workplace."
It also echoed complaints about reforms in the federal personnel system expressed in report last year by Blacks in Government, a federal employee group. It's now much easier for federal managers "to get rid of people they don't like regardless of their color," Warren said.
The task force hopes to discuss its concerns with officials at OPM soon, Warren said. Other agenda items for 2000 include pressuring Congress to boost EEOC funding and pursuing litigation against agencies with severe records of discrimination, he said.
The task force hopes to complete further data analysis by this summer and plans to issue a report on minority hiring and promotion practices governmentwide, Warren said.
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