The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Discrimination, in and of itself, is not a harmful action. For example, people discriminate all the time when they choose one particular restaurant over another or one movie over another. Such discrimination is based on each personÆs taste and personal experience. Employers also discriminate regularly, such as when they hire one job applicant over another because the former had more experience in the type of job advertised. Such discrimination is proper and expected and generally makes good business sense. However, democratic capitalistic economies are based on the belief that individuals, if given the opportunity, will work in order to get ahead (Fritz & Kleiner, 2000, p. 58).

Individuals only believe in and support capitalist notions when they believe they are democratically, i.e., equally applied. Improper discrimination in employment violates the principles of a democratic capitalist economy because it denies certain individuals the opportunity to benefit from capitalism. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the United States is the federal body that ensures that all Americans have an equality of opportunity in the American workplace. This paper explores the founding and function of the EEOC and the ways it seeks to reduce employment discrimination in the United States.

Before the 1960s, only employees who were in unions had specific protections of their rights in the workplace (Fritz & Kleiner, 2000, p.

. . .
e made to the EEOC is one of racial discrimination (Cicmanec & Kleiner, 2002, p. 3). However, such charges have declined since 1991 and they are the most likely to be thrown out. Cicmanec & Kleiner (2002, p. 3) argue that these cases are most often thrown out because the EEOC has a long history of these cases and thus has well-established criteria for what is needed to support such a charge. Thus, in 1999, the EEOC concluded through the investigation stage that 66 percent of the 28,819 charges based on race had no reasonable basis for the charge (Cicmanec & Kleiner, 2002, p. 3). In that same year, another 21 percent of race-based charges were closed for administrative reasons, such as the failure to locate a charging party or based on the result of related litigation which made proceeding in the case moot. Nonetheless, the slightly more than 14 percent of cases that proceeded to mediation and conciliation that year, generated 53.2 million dollars in monetary benefits for the charging parties (Cicmanec & Kleiner, 2002, p. 3). While fewer sexual harassment cases are filed with the EEOC (30.9 percent of the total in 1999), they are also less likely to be thrown out (40 percent chance as opposed to the average 61 percent of all E
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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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