Pushing forward with its mediation program, EEOC announces national agreement with major employer to mediate employment disputes

For several years, the EEOC has been promoting pre-investigation mediation of employment discrimination charges, with quite impressive results. This EEOC press release highlights the agency’s latest approach — attempting to enter into national agreements with large employers to mediate all discrimination charges.

Early mediation with the EEOC is certainly worth considering in many cases, but has both pros and cons.

A primary advantage is that it is free (or, more accurately, taxpayer-subsidized). Also, if a discrimination claim can be resolved at this early stage, it will generally be less expensive than resolving it during litigation because there will not have been a significant investment of time and money by a plaintiff’s attorney, and, of course, legal defense costs will be minimized.

On the other hand, at this stage, the parties will often know much less about many of the relevant facts and factors that establish the settlement value of a case than they will following the filing of a lawsuit and conducting of discovery.

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