The Commission Today

Chairwoman Ida L. Castro

Thank you for joining our historical tour of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I am proud of being a part of EEOC's groundbreaking work and its continuous efforts over the years to shape and undergird the structure of employment anti-discrimination law enforcement. During my tenure, I have sought to build upon the successes of the past by strategically focusing agency resources and priorities to have the greatest impact on eradicating employment discrimination.

The Commission of today is better because of the Commissions of yesterday. We celebrate our rich past by being a vibrant, ever more critical and necessary agency. In fiscal year1995 we began a targeted assault on the EEOC's backlog of discrimination charges. Thanks to President Clinton's request for and Congress's appropriation of sorely needed additional funds in fiscal year 1999, we were able to slash the backlog by a record 60% since 1995, and to embark on a number of cutting edge programs and efforts. We established a hugely successful national mediation program, expanded our investigative staff, launched an initiative for small and mid-sized business owners and stepped up our outreach efforts to employees and employers to make them better aware of their rights and responsibilities under the laws. We continued to work in partnership with our stakeholders and increased our rulemaking and policy guidance activity. And we developed the Comprehensive Enforcement Program, which permits maximum utilization of staff resources by increasing coordination between our attorneys and investigators while improving the timeliness, efficiency, and quality of enforcement and litigation efforts.

And the EEOC is stepping up its enforcement to stop egregious discrimination in its tracks; reaching out to minority communities and under served limited-English-proficiency communities; garnering breakthrough, major settlements across myriad industries; opening doors for people with disabilities, addressing the concerns of low wage earners; vigorously enforcing the laws to remedy harassment and retaliation; and ensuring that national origin and wage-based gender discrimination does not go unchallenged.

As we continue to forge full speed ahead toward fulfilling our mission, the EEOC will forever be inspired by those who went before and never be deterred from its mission to rid the American workplace of illegal discrimination.