Beleaguered Agency Claims Tough Enforcement of Job Anti-Bias Laws

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, battered by civil rights groups that charge that the Reagan Administration is trying to turn back the clock on anti-discrimination laws, recently mounted a publicity campaign of sorts in its own defense.

The agency announced that it had filed lawsuits against four employers, charging unfair employment practices. Then, early this month, it released a report noting that it filed 411 court cases in fiscal 1985, including a record 96 cases under age-discrimination laws. EEOC officials said that the suits “recovered a record-high $54 million” on behalf of victims of hiring discrimination.

“This commission is sending a clear message that our enforcement of the laws against discrimination is tough and thorough,” EEOC Chairman Clarence Thomas declared in a statement.

But the announcements have done little to quell the controversy enveloping the agency. Critics charge that the EEOC is merely laying down a smoke screen behind which the Administration can weaken a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to hire women and minority members.

Meese, Brock Disagree

Reagan’s Cabinet is divided over whether to weaken the 1965 order. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III is urging that the order be weakened and Labor Secretary William E. Brock III is leading the campaign to protect it. Reagan’s decision is expected by early January.

Despite rumors circulating in Washington that Meese and Brock have reached a compromise, the Justice and Labor departments remain officially silent, and civil rights advocates are skeptical. “It’s not settled,” said one rights advocate who asked not to be named.

“The Administration’s top priority is to dismantle the executive order,” said Anne Ladky, executive director of Women Employed, a Chicago-based organization that monitors employment issues. To smooth the way, she said, the Administration is trying to convince the public that the EEOC will vigorously enforce other anti-discrimination laws and rules.

At the center of the storm, Thomas is unbent. When asked in an interview about the commission’s critics, he said: “I don’t give a golden damn what they say.”

Chairman Defends Philosophy

Thomas said that he follows his own guiding principle--that minorities should not turn to the federal government for solutions to all their perceived problems. It is a view shaped by his grandfather in Savannah, Ga., and by the slain Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, who urged blacks to help themselves rather than wait for whites to end racial hatred and discrimination.

“I’m not telling any black people to go crawling to Capitol Hill begging for solutions,” said Thomas, who is black. “We have not survived in this country off of handouts.”

Seen as No Solution

To the civil rights community, however, Thomas’ approach is no solution at all. Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said he can find “no distinction” between Thomas and Meese, the civil rights lobby’s favorite villain in the Administration. Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, charged Thomas with trying to make the EEOC “an arm of the Justice Department.”

Civil rights activists have fond memories of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the EEOC’s chairman in the Jimmy Carter Administration, who not only pursued affirmative action with vigor but also surmounted some of the commission’s long-standing management problems.

Civil Rights Concerns

Over the years, said Douglas G. Glasgow, vice president in the National Urban League’s Washington office, the commission “slowly and sensitively progressed at infusing minorities and women into the workplace.” Its thousands of lawsuits filed in federal courts on behalf of aggrieved workers resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay and promotions for employees of firms ranging from the smallest companies to giants such as General Motors Corp. and American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

But now, Glasgow said, the EEOC’s activities have become “counterproductive to that effort.” Not only has the commission regularly failed to go to court to protect the rights of workers, he charged, it has also refused to provide statistics on its enforcement efforts.

Before the Reagan Administration, the EEOC had used goals and timetables for the hiring and promoting of minority members and women to decide whether to take the employers to court. And it had frequently filed class-action lawsuits, both on behalf of specific workers and for all other potential victims of discrimination.

Reversals of Policy

Thomas has largely reversed those approaches.

According to his congressional critics, EEOC decisions on whether to take employers to court are being based largely on the circumstances of individual workers who allege discrimination on the job. The EEOC field staff is disregarding employment goals and timetables, which Thomas said do not demonstrate a company’s degree of commitment to equal employment opportunity.

Strict numerical quotas, Thomas said, would provide a better guarantee of fairness in the workplace. But he said he opposes quotas on grounds that they not only represent reverse discrimination but also imply that their beneficiaries--minority members and women--could not succeed on their own.

And, when Thomas’ EEOC has gone to court, it has generally done so on behalf of individual workers rather than entire classes. He criticized the commission’s previous reliance on class actions as a “giveaway.”

Critics believe that Thomas’ intentions are evident in his declaration in favor of softening a regulation that requires employers with poor minority employment records to prove that the tests they use to make personnel decisions do not unfairly exclude minority members and women from jobs and advancement.

Sees Concept of Inferiority

Thomas said in an interview that the regulation is “based on a racist assumption that minorities are not as intellectually capable as whites,” he said.

Nancy Kreiter, research director for Women Employed, warned that the revised regulation could destroy hard-won affirmative-action gains. Rep. Hawkins has asked the General Accounting Office to investigate.

Although he has also been the target of personal attacks, Thomas, a clean-cut, intense man, believes that his social consciousness is safely wrapped in a background of activism. While attending Holy Cross College and Yale Law School, he said, he joined black student groups and helped poor legal clients. Since then, he added, he has worked for a variety of community social agencies.

“When you believe in something, you have to stick to it,” he said. “That’s what my granddaddy said. He said: ‘Stand up for what you believe in.’ ”