Eeoc

MOST investigations by the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involve allegations of bias by private employers. That's why its probe of the Baltimore Police Department's employment practices is unusual. The verdict: African-American officers are treated differently from whites in disciplinary cases and face retaliation if they complain.Swift action is needed to make sure that such inequities do not persist. The EEOC's finding that the Police Department has "a centralized practice" of disciplining African-American officers more harshly than whites is nothing short of scandalous, if such a practice indeed exists.

A federal jury has ruled that Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. discriminated against a white former maintenance manager at its old Landover coffee-roasting plant because of his race and awarded him $24,200 in expenses, with the recommendation that he be paid another $61,000 in back pay. In his reverse discrimination suit, John Sullivan said he was hired in 1999, only to be demoted and replaced by a black subordinate. He claimed an African American supervisor fired him in November 2002 because he is white.

WASHINGTON -- The fallout of the Tailhook sexual harassment scandal appears to be leading to congressional change of the process by which the government fields sexual harassment and other discriminatory complaints launched by federal employees.The Senate is to consider next month legislation that would restructure and streamline the system and hand it over to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which currently investigates private sector complaints.The Senate Government Affairs Committee last week approved the bill, sponsored by Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, without dissent.

MIAMI -- Big government is making a new attempt to impose itself as Big Brother or, in the case of a local restaurant, Big Sister.The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was informed that Joe's Stone Crab restaurant, an 84-year-old family-owned Miami institution with 250 employees, had not hired any female ''waitpersons'' in four years.Without a formal complaint by any individual alleging discrimination, the EEOC used Census data to persuade U.S. District Judge Court Daniel Hurley that a state of discrimination against women exists at Joe's.

WASHINGTON -- Judge Clarence Thomas said yesterday that he fired Angela D. Wright, the second woman who has accused him of making sexual advances, after she referred to a fellow staff member at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a "faggot.""I summarily dismissed her," Mr. Thomas told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also charged that Ms. Wright was ineffective in her post.Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., said that Ms. Wright -- who had been expected to testify today or tomorrow -- was now "totally bTC discredited" and had "cold feet" about appearing before the panel.

Baltimore County has asked a judge to suspend proceedings in an age-discrimination case, saying in federal court filings that determining damages owed to employees and retirees could be a "lengthy, costly and complex" process that requires the review of 10,000 pension files. County officials think it could take at least two years to determine how much people are owed in the case, according to the court documents. U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg ruled last month that the county's pension system discriminates because older workers had to pay more toward their retirement than younger workers.

|TC BOSTON -- Of course not every worker at the giant Mitsubishi plant knew about the sexual harassment. For openers, 610 of the workers are robots. We may assume their innocence.The rest of the folks seem to have had more than an inkling of the norm in Normal, Illinois. On April 9 when the EEOC hit the Mitsubishi fan with the largest sexual-harassment suit in the nation, many workers defended their company by saying things like this:''It wasn't that bad.''''They make us all look like perverts.

EEOC was right to combat bias at restaurant Cal Thomas may see the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) litigation against Joe's Stone Crab as "ridiculous" ("Double dose of legal lunacy," Opinion Commentary, July 31), but it is unlikely that many women in Miami's food-server community would agree. Before the EEOC stepped in to challenge the restaurant's hiring practices, women had virtually no chance of being hired there. For example, in the five-year period before the EEOC's involvement, the restaurant hired 108 people to wait tables.

Twenty-two women will share a $1 million settlement after bringing sexual harassment charges against a Laurel food-processing plant formerly owned by Columbia-based W.R. Grace & Co., the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said yesterday. "This is the most egregious sexual-harassment case I've ever tried," said Regina Andrew, a senior trial attorney for the EEOC, who has been with the agency 10 years. The alleged incidents, which included a rape, groping and solicitations by several managers and hourly workers, occurred over several years, beginning about 1992.

WASHINGTON -- A University of Oklahoma law professor has told the FBI that she was sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas while working for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.The professor, Anita F. Hill, told the FBI that Judge Thomas repeatedly discussed sexual matters with her in a suggestive way while she worked for the job discrimination monitoring agency in the early 1980s, according to a source who has seen her statement to the FBI.While Judge Thomas implicitly pressured Ms. Hill to have sex with her, he never told her explicitly that she would lose her job if she did not, the source said.