6 events in Passaic County with a date

Trump to end tracking of DEI job data

Critics question reasoning behind change

By: Jessica Guynn
USA Today

..... Just how diverse is corporate America? For decades , it has been the federal government's job to keep track.
..... Each year, major companies submit a breakdown of employees by race and gender in a from popularly known as an EEO-1 report. Since the 1960s, this trove of demographic data has been instrumental in spotting patterns of discrimination and supporting civil rights investigations in the workplace.
..... Not for much longer. The Trump administration has signaled it's putting a stop to it as part of its diversity, equity and inclusion reforms.
..... The Equal employment Opportunity Commission notified the White House that it plans to eliminate the reporting requirement for corporations as well as labor unions, sate and local government, apprenticeship programs and schools, marking a significant escalation in the fight over corporate diversity.
..... In recent years, EEO-1 data gave Americans greater visibility into how level the playing field is in their workplace, and critics warn cutting off this information flow will make it harder for corporations and regulators to gauge that. The Trump White House argues this is just the latest in a series of necessary steps to unwind Biden-era policies that unfairly promote favored groups over others.
..... Information tracking the state of diversity in the American workplace won't go away entirely. States like California and Illinois still require employers to submit workforce demographics reports. If the federal government stops collecting EEO-1 data, more states may enact similar reporting requirements. but little else stands in the EEOC's way, legal observes say.

'One of the most consequential civil rights reversals'

..... Title VII of the Civil rights Act of 1964 outlawed employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and established the EE-OC to enforce these new laws. But the new federal agency lacked concrete data to identify patterns of job discrimination and segregation based on race, ethnicity and sex. So the EEOC used its power under the Civil Rights Act to mandate that companies with 100 or more employees and federal contracts with 50 or more employees fill out reports with concrete demographic data.
..... Three-quarters of S&P 500 companies disclosed EEO-1 data for 2022 and 2023, according to Josh Ramer, founder of PeopleReturn, which provides data and research on workforce trends in public companies.
..... But corporations retreated as the DEI backlash accelerated when President Donald Trump took office of his second term in 2024, the latest year for which EEO-1 data is available, that figure dropped to about 57%, Ramer said.
..... The widely anticipated announcement that the EEOC would cease collecting the data drew a swift rebuke from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The research organization focused on issue affecting Black Americans said the loss of data could be "one of the most consequential civil-rights reversals of this era."
..... "For generations, America's civil-rights framework has operated on a simple premise: inequality can be measured. Mortgage lending disparates, Redlining employment discrimination. Unequal to capital. none of these were exposed because institutions voluntarily admitted wrongdoing. They were uncovered because data was collected, analyzed and tested in courts," it wrote.
...... Proponents say enforcement agencies like the EEOC rely on EEO-1 data to know where to focus their limited resources.
..... Employers sue it to identify major gaps in their workforce and barriers to equal opportunity.
..... "Without this data, the EEOC loses its most basic tool needed to do its job," said fairness, access, inclusion and representation strategist lily Zheng, author of "Reconstructing DEI."
..... The EEOC did not respond to a request for comment.

Why DEI critics want to scrap data

..... Eliminating EEO-1 data collection has been on the Republican wish list going back decades.
..... The Heritage Foundation made it a priority in Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint it drew up in anticipation of Trump's return to power.
..... Jonathan Berry, a veteran of he first Trump administration and lead author of a chapter on the Labor Department and related agencies, told USA Today in 2024 that the EEO-1 report is a "reductive document: that requires employers to classify their employees into racial categories even without suspected discrimination, encouraging employers and the government alike to evaluate employees in racial terms.
..... "The goal here is to move toward colorblindness and to recognize hat we need to have laws and polices that treat people like full human beings not reducible to categories especially when it comes to categories, especially when it comes to race,: said Berry, now solicitor for the Department of Labor.
..... Central to Trump's presidential campaign and his second term in office is eliminating DEI programs hat he says focus on race and gender at the expense of individual achievement.
..... Even though me - and White men in particular - dominate corporate America, his view is that "unlawful" and "woke" DEI policies have harmed White Americans - and White men specifically.
..... Some legal observers questioned the Trump administration's reasoning for no longer tracking workforce demographics.
..... Historically White workers make up a small fraction of bias allegations to the EEOC.
..... White workers account for about 10% of all race discrimination claims despite making up about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce, according to data USA Today obtained form the EEOC in 2023.
..... A study from the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts found that White men filed about 9% of race discrimination claims form 2012 to 2016.
..... "Wouldn't the EEOC want this data if there is rampant DEI-driven discrimination against White men?" Josh Roffman with the Roffman Horvitz law firm asked on LinkedIn.
..... "The data won't support their narrative and political talking points. It will show that female and Black and Hispanic employees are "underemployed' compared to tier peers, as it always has."

HOME