Summary: By law, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) must accept every charge of employment discrimination. Today, however, EEOC is burdened with a growing and aging inventory of pending charges. In addition, because employees are more aware of their rights and the number of nondiscrimination laws is sizeable, EEOC faces a growing inflow of new charges. To handle this workload, EEOC would need a large number of new staff--an unlikely development given the current environment of budgetary constraints. EEOC's new Chairman recognizes this dilemma. He has discontinued EEOC's long-standing policy of fully investigating every charge in favor of a policy that targets investigative resources on the basis of the strength of the evidence of discrimination behind discrimination claims. He also directed EEOC to provide selected cases an opportunity to attempt settlement through mediation before resorting to the traditional charge process. Although it believes that these are steps in the right direction, GAO doubts that these efforts alone can solve EEOC's charge-processing problem. Instead, it may be time for EEOC, with the help of Congress and others, to reexamine its mission and how it is carried out.
