Search Firms Beware: EEOC Suit Targets Search Firm

Title VII includes this definition:

“The term ‘employment agency’ means any person regularly undertaking with or without compensation to procure employees for an employer or to procure for employees opportunities to work for an employer and includes an agent of such a person.”

Title VII also provides:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

I assume this would include what Michael refers to as a “search firm.” I’m sure many recruiters, search firms, etc. may find “employment agency” an oudated term or one that does not accurately describe their particular business niche, but the bottom line is: does the above definition describe what they do? I suspect it does.

I am quite surprised that EEOC has taken anything seriously. This generally useless organization that does little more than occupy space and use up good resources, usually defends businesses and craps on human rights of minorities. If they truly defended an age discrimination case, the regional director must have felt unusually compassionate that day or guilty for all the cases they so improperly investigated.

I never expected to be defending the EEOC to someone who sounds like they’re coming from the employee side of the aisle (I could see having to defend it to employers, perhaps).

If this anonymous, obviously embittered commenter were actually interested in learning about how active and successful the EEOC is, there is a wealth of data accessible from the EEOC web site:

http://www.eeoc.gov

One interesting place to start might be to look at the hundreds of millions of dollars the agency recovers each year:

Office of General Counsel
A Study of the Litigation Program
Fiscal Years 1997 - 2001

http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/study/index.html

Complaining parties whose EEOC charges are rejected receive a right-to-sue notice and can go shop for a contingent fee attorney to take the employer to court regardless of the EEOC’s opinion.

Can’t find a lawyer?

If the EEOC didn’t like your case and you shop it to several experienced employment lawyers and they don’t like it either, to be blunt, this means you’ve got a lousy case. The private employment bar’s profit motive means good and even marginal cases are pursued; only the stinkers are hung out to dry.

Does the fact that EEOC pursues only a small fraction of the cases to litigation mean it’s useless?

Not if the process results in the agency’s selection of the very best cases on which to use its limited resources litigating.

By the way, it also has a very successful mediation program that gets many cases settled quickly, avoiding a litigation process that can take employees literally years and years.

When I worked in the recruiting industry, it was not uncommon for companies to make discriminatory requests for applicants. While my practice was to let companies know that I could not comply with their requests, I know many recruiters who played *hush *hush *wink *wink.

It seems that some companies feel that if they use a third party recruiter it gives them a license to discriminate. They will say things like, “I know we are not supposed to do this - but just between us — a young female would work out best for this position.”

It’s incumbent upon recruiters not to fall into this trap in the name of providing customer service to clients.

Beth C.
Nobscot Corporation
http://www.Nobscot.com
http://nobscot.blogspot.com