Mishandled Age Bias Cases Get 2nd Chance

More than 1,200 older workers stripped of legal recourse by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s mishandling of their age discrimination complaints will get a second chance under a new law that permits the reopening of the cases.

The measure, signed into law last week by President Reagan following overwhelming votes of support in Congress, was a response to the agency’s public admission late last year that, through incompetence, it allowed a legal deadline to expire without having concluded its investigations of hundreds of age bias complaints.

Notify Workers

The commission’s inaction meant the older workers, most of whom were waiting for the agency’s findings before deciding if they would file lawsuits against their former employers, lost the right to sue.

Lobbyists for the aging and congressional critics of the commission argued that it was wrong to make workers who had depended on the agency pay for its ineptitude.

Under the new law, the commission has 60 days to notify workers whose complaints were filed after Dec. 31, 1983, and then closed because the two-year deadline for court action had expired, that the cases were mishandled. At the worker’s request, the agency is required to reinstate its investigation.

The law gives workers 18 months from the reopening of an investigation to file a lawsuit against a former employer.

The legislation requires the agency to report its progress in reopening the complaints to Congress, where three committees are continuing inquiries into the agency’s management practices and its handling of bias complaints.

More than 220 of the botched cases were filed with the agency’s Los Angeles office--the second-highest total among the agency’s 23 field offices.