HireBox: Employer Action Needed Now to Avoid Administrative Chaos of Postponed EEO-1 Pay Report Requirement
Clearwater FL (PRWEB) October 04, 2017 -- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sent shock waves through U.S. business when it announced in 2016 that it would require a complex set of pay data to be reported by every employer filing an annual EEO-1 report for 2017(1). Projected implementation costs for a business employing 100 or more people would minimally include addition of any necessary personnel, plus development of appropriate software for tracking and correlation of W-2 wage information and total hours worked by race, ethnicity and gender(2).
The EEO-1 requirement's fate remains uncertain. Victoria Lipnic, acting chair of the EEOC, is the only of its four current commissioners who opposed the plan in 2016. Permanent revisions to the pay report requirement at this point are not possible or likely, unless and until Republicans can gain a majority on the five-member panel. Two of those seats—one now vacant, and a second being held until replaced, by Jenny Yang (whose term expired in July)—have yet to be filled by presidential appointment and senate confirmation(3).
Until then, despite the pay report's apparent good intentions of rectifying pay inequities, expectations are, instead, for exponential growth of discrimination claims due to the pay-related factors which were not made part of the EEO-1 report(4). Besides mediating thousands of cases annually, the EEOC is empowered to file civil discrimination suits against employers on behalf of job applicants and employees who allege discrimination on the basis of, among other factors, race, nation of origin, religion, age, sexual orientation--and most significantly, as retaliation for reporting, participating in, or opposing a discriminatory practice(5).
“Despite suspension of the EEO-1 pay reporting requirement, employers need to stay informed and start dealing immediately with the likelihood of new EEO-1 requirements, or face costly mistakes and devastating legal issues,” says president and CEO Patrick Valtin of HireBox.com, a results-based testing platform.
Accusations of retaliatory pay discrimination, even for an employer with the best intentions, are among the greatest threats. While EEOC claims have risen steadily since 2006, claims of employer retaliation have nearly doubled in that time from 22,555 to 42,018 in 2016, and comprise 45.9% of all claims made(6).
Retaliation claims often result from poor handling of other types of claims. A case in point is Ford Motor Co.’s recent agreement to pay up to $10.1 million in settling racial and sexual harassment claims on behalf of female and black personnel at two Chicago-area plants that resulted in retaliation, thus allowing Ford to avoid a class action suit being pursued in federal court(7).
But for CSX Transportation, Inc., based in Huntington, West Virginia, a class-action suit proved unavoidable. On August 2, the EEOC filed suit against CSX in U.S. District Court, claiming that since 2008 the rail-based transport service has violated federal law by using a “physical abilities test battery that causes a class-wide disparate impact on female workers seeking a range of jobs,” requiring upper- and lower-body muscle strength as a requirement for jobs as conductors, material handlers/clerks, and positions in several other job categories.(8)
Valtin says the key to dealing with the EEOC is always studying the current laws well in advance of mandated implementation and preparing to apply them exactly(9).
About HireBox.com
HireBox is a results-based testing platform utilizing legal quality control to give hiring missions the best outcome. Founded by Patrick Valtin, the job-matching assessments and internal evaluations provide vital information about potential and current employees to human resource professionals, executive coaches, management consultants and CPAs.
Based on the evaluation of over 25,000 applicants, Patrick Valtin has come to the conclusion that no matter the talent, competencies or experience, the odds of a successful hire are very, very low if willingness AND ability to contribute to one’s team success & happiness as selection criteria are missing. For more information on HireBox and its successful tools for recruitment, assessment, hiring, onboarding and retention visit http://www.hirebox.com
About Patrick Valtin
Patrick Valtin is the president and CEO of New Era Management and HireBox, as well as an international speaker and author. Considered an industry leader in recruiting, pre-employment assessment, personnel performance evaluation, and human resources development, he has trained more than 85,000 people in more than 30 countries over the last 20 years.
Patrick Valtin was an international business consultant for the Belgian government between 1986 and 1988, later starting his Belgian company, U-MAN, in 1988. The company remains today the biggest training company for small businesses in the country.
Valtin received an MBA from the Moore Business School at the University of South Carolina in 1982 (Master of international Business Studies); his clients in the last 22 years have included Ford Motors, BMW, Mercedes, Motorola, IBM, and Century 21. His book, No-Fail Hiring 2.0, is a bestseller on Amazon.
(1) EEOC to Collect Summary Pay Data, EEOC
(2) “White House Suspends Pay Data Reporting on Revised EEO-1 Form.” HR Knowledge, 18 Sept. 2017.
(3) 10, 2017 February. “Pay Data Collection Plan Needs New Look, EEOC Acting Head Says.”Pay Data Collection Plan Needs New Look, EEOC Acting Head Says | Bloomberg BNA..
(4) Littler Mendelson PC -David J. Goldstein. “Revised EEO-1 Report - Where Does It Stand?”Lexology
(5) “Discrimination by Type.” Types of Discrimination, EEOC
(6) “All Statutes (Charges Filed with EEOC) FY 1997 - FY 2016.” All Statutes, EEOC.
(7) Elejalde-Ruiz, Alexia. “Ford Settles Sexual, Racial Harassment Claims at Chicago Plants for $10 Million.” Chicagotribune.com, 18 Aug. 2017.
(8) “EEOC Charges CSX Strength Test Biased against Women.” Business Insurance,
(9) “2 Common Denominators To All Successful Entrepreneurs.” No-Fail Hiring, 3 Oct. 2016, nofailhiring.com/2-common-denominators-to-all-successful-entrepreneurs/.
Karla Jo Helms, JoTo PR, http://www.jotopr.com, +1 888-202-4614 Ext: 802, [email protected]
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