I recall reading about someone who owned a small business, and was investigated by the EEOC for suspected discrimination. They determined that he employed one fewer minority than what was the “expected number” of minorities for his area and industry, and was fined because of it. I think he was in the lamp business. Does anyone know what I’m talking about, or know of any similar cases?
Here is the specific case you mentioned:
This seems to be the case that’s held up as the reason why affirmative action is bad. Honestly, every single reference that I could find was on a Republican web site. I don’t like to give partisan cites, but what can you do? This one in particular is from the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
[sub]BTW, Google is, quite seriously, insanely good. I typed in “EEOC lamp” and the first hit was golden.[/sub]
Um. in the segment you quote:
'in companies of 100 or more employees, the DL Co should employe 8.45 black people, not eight" and therefore, the co is fined. But immediately prior it says, "of twenty eight employees…
something definately amiss in this rendition of the story.
The cited reference states, “Of twenty-eight employees, eighteen were hispanic and eight were black.”
There is nothing wrong whatsoever with this statement. Presumably the other two employees were NOT hispanic or black. They could be white, Asian, etc.
Um, it’s not a Republican web site; it’s a Senate web site. For cryin’ out loud, it’s not like it came from some partisan PAC. The quoted citation derives from the minutes of a discussion on the merits of an amendment to a bill to be placed before the Senate. If it was a fabrication, don’t you think one of the 59 Democrats in the Senate (102d Congress) (who voted on this amendment) would have jumped all over it?
Sheesh, is everything a conspiracy?
The important quote is “business of one hundred or more employees”. I think Wring’s point is that if they don’t have more than 100 employees (they only have 28), they shouldn’t be held accountable to that standard. This may or may not be true – I don’t know the intricacies of the EEOC.
And yes, that web page is housed on the Senate web server. But the larger web site it is part of (http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/) is for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. You’re trying to tell me that a committee made up only of Republicans Senators is not partisan?
For the record, the vote was on a motion to table the amendment, i.e. kill it. The Democrats who voted for it were opposing the amendment, but supporting the motion to table.
The Senate committee report citing the lamp company incident was filed by the supporters of the amendment. That is fair eough. Of course, their version of the story is not exactly complete, in any way.
To the extent that the Chicago office of the EEOC may have used quotas to determine who to investigate (which appears to have been part ofthe case), the EEOC office should have been disciplined.
The rest of the story, however, includes a number of points that somehow did not make it into the Republicans’ argument.
According to the EEOC:
The lamp company was near the border of two ethnic neighborhoods, one black, one hispanic. It was, however, located within the black neighborhood. Once the investigation began, it was determined by the EEOC that the owner had targeted the hispanic neighborhood for recruiting, going to that area to post help wanted posters and notifying social clubs and schools that he was seeking help. He did not make any similar efforts in the neighborhood in which his company was located and he turned away neighbor applicants who were black on the grounds that he had no openings at the same time that he was recruiting in the hispanic neighborhood.
(Mike Royko wrote about this situation in several different columns.)
I do not know whether the EEOC office report was correct. They may have made it up to cover their backsides or they may have reported the facts exactly as they occurred.
If the EEOC twisted the facts in any way, that office should have been hung out to dry.
It is also possible that the “bare facts” claimed by the EEOC were technically accurate, but that there were extenuating circumstances. (Were there no black social clubs in the neighborhood and were the schools in that section less receptive to recruiting? Was the owner actually simply using “word of mouth” recruiting from a core of employees who were originally mostly hispanic so that there was an unintended effect of selecting hispanic over black applicants?) I don’t know.
As a cause celebre of the evil demon of quotas, however, the story has far too many questions surrounding it to justify its use by the Helms or the other committee members.
I oppose quotas, but I prefer that arguments have some basis in fact. I doubt that either side of the Senate committee was all that interested in the facts.
I have been having trouble finding actual news articles going back to 1989 on the web. All the web postings on the lamp company are right-wing–understandable since no left-wing group wants to defend the EEOC in what was clearly a case of very heavy-handed interference.
It does appear that Mr. Welbel actually wound up paying a $24,000 fine ($8,000/year for three years into a “settlement fund”), despite the original assessment of the larger fine (given sometimes as $128,000 and sometimes as $130,000 or $133,000).
The posted articles also dispute the contention that Daniel Lamp was located in a black neighborhood, claiming that he was, in fact, in an hispanic neighborhood.
Short of finding an actual news report from the period, I’m not sure that we’re going to find the facts of this case. (The 60 Minutes episode does not count as news.)
Robby, SmackFu is correct in that the important part is the “in cases of 100 employees”.
See the quote says “in cases of 100 employees, the company should have 8.45 blacks.” but in this case, the company has 28 employees, eight of which are black. But the company still got fined. If the standard is :
8.45 blacks per 100 employees, then the company with 28 employees should have 2.366 blacks (according to my calculations), and since they had 8, it exceeded that level. So, since there was a fine because of non compliance, it either had nothing to do with the standard quoted or the standard quoted was significantly wrong.
I think the article meant that, based on the survey, a company should employ 30.18% blacks. So in a company of 28 they should employ 8.45. At least, that’s the way I interpreted it.
I have no opinion on the rest of the story.
I interpreted the report the way that dylan_73 did, that is, that the statistical analysis the EEOC conducted was based on local businesses of 100 or more employees (because larger sample sizes give more accurate results), but that the results were normalized for this company of 28 employees.
I apparently misunderstood ** Wring’s** point.
However, I honestly don’t think the EEOC could be so stupid as to require a certain raw number of minorities regardless of the number of employees in the company…
However, as in any organization, one office or team within an office can certainly behave in ways that are more arbitrary and less intelligent than the guidelines that have been handed out.
Even while supporting the basic goals and policies of the EEOC and opposing the portrayal of this incident as cited by Helms and company, I still think that the two EEOC agents were really heavy-handed on this occasion and may have started grasping at straws when they were called to account for their actions.