EEOC receives nearly 3,000 comments on EEO-1 report

The public comment period on the EEOC’s plan to eliminate the EEO-1 report closed on August 24. The EEOC received 2,580 comments, with an overwhelming majority opposing elimination of the report.

Background 

The EEOC voted to rescind the EEO-1 and other recording requirements 2-1 in July. The proposal to rescind the requirement was published in the Federal Register on July 23. On August 11, the EEOC held a public hearing, with 22 speakers testifying both for and against the rescission. 

Business orgs generally support rescission, shareholders object 

A number of business organizations supported the rescission because of the burden of collecting and reporting the data required by the EEO-1 report. The Chamber of Commerce and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) urged the EEOC to provide guidance to employers on whether they can continue to collect and analyze such race, ethnicity, and sex data on their own. Meanwhile, the Institute for Workforce Equality strongly objected to rescission, saying the burden argument is misleading as states are already moving to replace EEO-1 with their own differing requirements, recommending instead that the EEOC set up a task force to update the report. The investor community, who oversee public and private investment funds, strongly objected to the rescission because the EEO-1 report data is an invaluable resource in assessing potential investments. 

Arguments divided by politics