Link to the story.

I don't understand union or labor law at all. How is the proposed violation different from "flex-time" policies that exist at workplaces across the nation?

So the difference stems from the fact that "comp time" or "overtime" workers are paid hourly wages, but most "flextime" workers are paid annual or monthly salaries?

If you are covered by the FLSA (non-profesional, but it is a very complicated matter usually since everyone gets this wrong) - you have a choice: overtime or comp time. End of story.

Not quite. For non-governmental employees (obviously not relevant to the EEOC, but you seemed to be speaking more generally) who are non-exempt, they have no such choice. Lots of employers/employees get this wrong, but it's the case: for covered non-governmental employees, comp time is not allowed. If you work more than 40 hours in a week, you must be paid overtime.

(To clarify: the FLSA only concerns itself with weekly hours, not daily ones. So you can get what some call "comp time" as long as it's applied within the same week. If you work 12 hours on Monday, but make up for it by only working 4 hours on Wednesday, you're not entitled to overtime under the FLSA. But unless you're a government employee, you cannot work 12 hours this Monday and make up for it by only working 4 hours next Monday.)

The EEOC has a much worse record of labor and civil-rights violations than most corporations and agencies with a similar-size workforce.

It was found guilty of systematic reverse discrimination in Jurgens v. Thomas, 29 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1561, 1982 WL 409 (N.D.Tex.1982). When he was head of the EEOC, Clarence Thomas tried but failed to curb the systematic reverse discrimination that went on in the agency.

The EEOC also has had a lot of sexual harassment lawsuits against it (and I am talking about real sexual harassment, not weak claims based on a couple of off-color jokes, the sort of trivial thing the EEOC might sue a private employer over). See Spain v. Gallegos, 26 F.3d 439 (9th Cir.1994).

The EEOC has been likened to "the fox guarding the henhouse." See John Berlau, "Discrimination at the Opportunity Commission," Insight, May 19, 1997, available at http://findarticles.com/
p/articles/mi_m1571/
is_n18_v13/ai_19403271.

The EEOC continues to discriminate against white male employees, ironically, including those white males it sends to defend affirmative action in court. See, e.g., Terry v. Gallegos, 926 F.Supp. 679 (W.D. Tenn. 1996) (agency discriminated against attorney Joseph Ray Terry, who argued that California's Prop. 209 was preempted by EEOC affirmative action regulations — an argument bought by the trial judge, but rejected by the Ninth Circuit, which upheld Prop. 209 against both statutory and constitutional challenges in Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson, 122 F.3d 692 (9th Cir. 1997); Prop. 209 is also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or Article 1, Section 31 of the California constitution).

David M. Nieporent makes a critically important point at 9:56 a.m. for nongovernmental employers. Per 29 U.S.C. 207 (a) private employers covered by the FLSA must pay their nonexempt employees overtime for hours worked in excess of forty hours per week; an offer of compensatory time, even if accepted, does not relieve them of their obligation to pay overtime.

Like most leftist rules this one is" for thee and not for me."

Did you see the proposed Congressional Equality Constitutional Amendment?


CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW that does not apply equally to Congress and its members as it does to citizens, businesses, states and municipalities.

All existing laws that exempt Congress are repealed as of one year after the date of the ratification of this amendment.


It's here:

http://galtpress.com/CEA.html

Umm. I was giving a rundown of the FLSA as applicable to feds - so my description is accurate.

Pubic hair on Coke cans has to violate some labor standard too.

I'd also like some more recent support for the "continues to discriminate" claim, Hans. (I also enjoyed how Hans supports his position by saying that the EEOC "has been likened" to a fox guarding the henhouse when, if you follow the link, it was Hans himself who did the "likening".)

The comp time rules that apply to federal employees in Title 5 are not exactly the same as the comp time rules under the FLSA.

Hans Bader,

Nice to see how you entirely ducked the time period issue. Your argument would be far stronger if you were to cite something that wasn't more than a decade old. The more recent the better for your argument.

Nice to see how you entirely ducked the time period issue. Your argument would be far stronger if you were to cite something that wasn't more than a decade old. The more recent the better for your argument.

Why should he waste a moment's time on such an attempt? Surely any claim that anything could have been better during the Bush administration than previous ones is facially preposterous.

No data on this, but another reason the EEOC could have a higher than average history of civil rights violations is that the type of people who seek employment there are often going to be people who are very sensitive to the chapter and verse of the applicable laws and regulations. It's really not that difficult to turn something that most people would consider a minor inconvenience or insult into, well, a federal case, if you are of a mind to.

No data on this, but another reason the EEOC could have a higher than average history of civil rights violations is that the type of people who seek employment there are often going to be people who are very sensitive to the chapter and verse of the applicable laws and regulations. It's really not that difficult to turn something that most people would consider a minor inconvenience or insult into, well, a federal case, if you are of a mind to.

Another way of putting a different spin on basically the same point is that EEOC employees, having a better knowledge of their legal rights, are in a better position to enforce those rights when their employer violates the law.

Random3,

The problem I see with the argument you make is that I would expect it to be even more true for the managers. Any amount of sensitivity a typical EEOC staffer might have I would expect to see reflected greatly in the management.

So I suspect tomething else is at play here.

I don't know, Bulb. If someone's coworkers are making disturbing (and false, not that it matters) sexual insinuations towards her in the workplace, and her (and their) supervisor does nothing to stop them despite being repeatedly asked to do so, isn't he responsible, as a matter of law?

Yeah, I think so. It was bad conduct. But Hans was trying to make the point that it was ESPECIALLY BAD sexual harassment. Basically, some gossipers started a rumor that the two were having sex. When she said "hey boss, go tell them that's it's not true, I'm too embarrassed to tell them myself," he said "no, I'm also too embarrassed to make an office-wide announcement that we're not having sex." As the opinion said, his nonaction - and he DID have a duty to take action - led to a "sexually hostile" work environment, which is illegal.

From the opinion:

"The [district] court [in this case] thus held that Title VII does not require that a supervisor deny rumors that he is having an affair with a subordinate...In its ruling, the district court stated that Title VII does not require a supervisor who is the object of a rumored affair between himself and a subordinate to "embarrass himself" by denying the rumors."

"Quite clearly, she presents an atypical sexually hostile work environment claim in that the alleged wrongful conduct does not include the type of blatantly sexist behavior that is frequently the hallmark of such claims."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, responsible for ensuring that the nation's workers are treated fairly, has itself willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act on a nationwide basis with its own employees, an arbitrator has ruled.

So Dubya's EEOC wasn't very labour-friendly, eh? Colour me surprised. Not sure how that translates into an EPV, though, or any indictment of the concept of an EEOC (except to show that Republicans can run one of these into the ground as well as they can with FEMA).

Cheers,

If someone's coworkers are making disturbing (and false, not that it matters)

I'm not sure. It may matter that the rumors were false. The remedial action that the employer must take may be different: if they are true, he might just have to tell people to stop mentioning them in the workplace. If they are false, he might have to tell people to stop mentioning the rumors AND that the rumors are not true.

Footnote in a very egregious sexual harassment case, Winsor v. Hinckley Dodge, 79 F.3d 996 (grabbing her, calling her every dirty word imaginable, etc.):

"Although there was a sexual content to the rumors of a relation between plaintiff and the sales manager, and the statements attributing her success to such a relationship, the district court's finding that the rumors and comments were gender neutral is not clearly erroneous. Based on observed behavior, there was strong evidence that plaintiff and her manager had a special relationship, and that plaintiff's success was due, in some part, to this relationship. It appears that such rumors would have occurred even if the roles were reversed and plaintiff were male. This is different from the situation in Jew v. University of Iowa, 749 F.Supp. 946, where there was no basis for the rumors other than Dr. Jew's gender, and Spain v. Gallegos, where the rumors were not true but were created and perpetuated by improper conduct by plaintiff's supervisor."

M. Bulb, the harassment alleged by Spain was considerably more hostile than one in which a few off-colour jokes are told. You seem to be arguing that all hostile environment claims are equally low on the scale of harassment. A workplace environment where "office gossip" reaches the point where the existence of it causes the people to lose promotions is a far cry from one in which a person has only to listen to the occasional off-colour joke. If you wish to criticise M. Bader for considering any hostile environment harassment claim to be serious enough to warrant action feel free to do so, but dismissing the Spain harassment as mere "office gossip" is a bit of a stretch.

keypusher64:

Dubya's EEOC?

The EEOC is an independent agency, not the president's fiefdom.

As Hertz would say, "not exactly":

EEOC has five commissioners and a General Counsel appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Commissioners are appointed for five-year, staggered terms. The term of the General Counsel is four years. The President designates a Chair and a Vice Chair. The Chair is the chief executive officer of the Commission. The five-member Commission makes equal employment opportunity policy and approves most litigation. The General Counsel is responsible for conducting EEOC enforcement litigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Equal Pay Act (EPA), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

And then there's this.

Cheers,

MG:

Did the "EOCC" collectively do the wrongful acts, or wa it individuals? You need something more to make a case for the "EEOC's hypocrisy".

Soronel Haetir wrote:

Random3,

The problem I see with the argument you make is that I would expect it to be even more true for the managers. Any amount of sensitivity a typical EEOC staffer might have I would expect to see reflected greatly in the management.

So I suspect tomething else is at play here

I understand your point, but I think you may not be aware of the dynamic at work between managers and rank and file employees in these situations. Rank and file employees in these government offices are unionized, in one of the main federal employee unions (National Treasury Employees Union or American Federal Government Employees). The unions tend to foster an adversarial relationship with management, including and even particularly with the management at the EEOC and civil rights offices - because the managers can never do enough, or do it quickly enough, to satisfy all of the EEOC &civil rights complaints that they are faced with. So the managers will often do what they need to do to keep their job, which means doing what their own senior management wants. Senior management wants everything to be, or at least appear to be, happy. So first-line managers that constantly agitate and bother their senior managers with civil rights complaints don't stay managers for long. In fact, those people are spotted by senior management much earlier in their careers, and usually never get to be managers in the first place (which just proves to the rank and file staff how unjust the whole system is).