Another Scandalous Encounter With The EEOC

… Or perhaps I should say, Encounter With The Scandalous EEOC.

The Rocky Mountain News, while denying any wrongdoing, has agreed to pay $375,000 to 10 black press workers to settle a suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (See here for another report of the settlement.)

This entire case — including, in my opinion. the Rocky’s decision to settle rather than contest the charges if what its editor and publisher says (here and here) is true — is pathetic. But it certainly is not unique in the annals of the EEOC. Indeed, I titled this post “Another Encounter” because of an earlier one with which I am much more familiar, discussed at length in the last two thirds of a long post here.

As reported by the Rocky’s editor, president, and publisher, John Temple, “On July 31, 2003, the -EEOC issued a press release dated July 31, 1993….” The mistake in the last date was the EEOC’s, not Temple’s.

The press release contained a powerful quote from the EEOC’s then-Denver District Director Francisco J. Flores, Jr.: “In this day and age, all employers should be fully aware that racial harassment has no place in the workplace.” Who wouldn’t agree with that?

But then he went on to say: “The type of egregious and malicious remarks that were hurled at African American employees (emphasis added) in this case clearly shows that the fight to eradicate employment discrimination is far from over.”

And therein lies the problem. He stated as fact what he couldn’t possibly have known to be true because the information-gathering part of the case hadn’t yet begun.

But why let a little thing like an investigation come before stating conclusions? Indeed, as the Sears attorneys were fond of pointing out over twenty years ago in the case I alluded to (and linked to my discussion of) above, the EEOC’s operating motto seemed to be, “Charge First, Investigate Later.” In any event:

Almost two years later when the case settled before trial, Joseph H. Mitchell, regional attorney in the EEOC’s Denver office, issued his own statement. And despite all he’d learned in his so-called investigation and from evidence provided by the Rocky, he said exactly the same thing as Flores in the agency’s press release announcing the settlement.

“In this day and age, all employers should be fully aware that racial harassment has no place in the workplace. The type of egregious and malicious remarks that were hurled at African American employees (emphasis added) in this case clearly shows that the fight to eradicate employment discrimination is far from over.”

Funny that two different men, two years apart, would use exactly the same language. Is there some kind of canned script EEOC bureaucrats are required to follow? What if they learn something different in the course of a lawsuit, something that might at least shade their views? What if they know full well that the accused admits to no wrongdoing, as is the case here?

But since a government agency probably cannot plagiarize itself, the EEOC’s limited rhetorical arsenal is small potatoes. Of more significance are these damaging charges broght by Temple:

What if the person in whose name this case was filed had been fired for sabotaging a running printing press before he ever raised the issue of racial harassment, as is also true? What if the union that represented him never filed a grievance regarding any hostile racial climate, even though it filed 50 grievances during the 15-month period covered by this settlement? What if none of the people whom the EEOC slipped in to the case – some involuntarily – had complained previously and all were told beforehand that there was potential money in a settlement?

What if the company and the African-American manager who supervised the press room where all the alleged victims worked had a record of responding promptly to incidents?

Given these facts (assuming here that they are facts), one can understand and sympathize with Temple’s anger and frustration. As he wrote,

What I learned in my encounter with the EEOC is that the power of an unchecked prosecutor – in this case three EEOC lawyers – is frightening.

What I learned is that you can’t trust that prosecutors in all cases are committed to learning the truth. I also learned that a company’s good name – the Rocky is Colorado’s oldest continuously operated business – doesn’t matter much to an agency with its own agenda. The EEOC knew that there were problems with its case, just as we knew there were problems with ours.

But Temple’s two statements cited here also leave some questions as well. What were the “problems” with the paper’s own case? Were they severe enough to warrant paying $375,000 to settle charges that these statements imply were baseless, vindictive, and even the product of a promised payoff?

If not, if the settlement was instead simply based on a cost-benefit calculation that it would be cheaper to settle than to fight — an option, by the way, Sears to its eternal credit refused to choose, then the Rocky’s response begins to resemble a ransom payment to hostage takers.

ADDENDUM [19 June]

I should have mentioned that the Rocky Mountain News is owned by the E.W. Scripps company, and thus the decision to settle may well not have been editor/publiser/president John Temple’s at all, or at least not his alone. Indeed, for all I know he may have been ordered to settle by the suits in the home office.

Still, somebody — Temple or his corporate bosses — should be embarrassed at giving in to the ransom demands of a federal agency that had assaulted and kidnapped the Rocky’s good name if the EEOC’s suit was as outrageous as Temple’s utterly believable description makes it appear to be. It may be naive to think of the press as anything other than a business, but some of us still do.