From:	Spieler, Emily <e.spieler@neu.edu>
Sent:	Thursday, January 31, 2013 10:42 AM
To:	zzOSHA-WB-WPAC
Cc:	Slavet, Beth - OSHA OWPP; Berkowitz, Deborah - OSHA
Subject:	EEOC data on charges

Dear WPAC members:

Thanks for a great meeting.  I look forward to continuing our discussions, and hopefully to establishing 
one or more working groups before we meet again.

I thought you might be interested in the recently released EEOC data, to which Solicitor Smith referred 
in her remarks, as you think about the future discussions regarding treatment of complaints by 
OSHA.  These data relate to the question: how do complainants fare under other statutes?  

Here is the link to the current EEOC data: http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/index.cfm 
.  I’m pretty sure that the cases regarding employment discrimination (and related retaliation) that are 
filed with state agencies under parallel statutes are not included here, so this may not be the full 
universe of discrimination cases. (The state statistics here are the EEOC complaints by state.)  When I 
was studying this more closely, about half of complaints went into the state systems.  But this does give 
us a point of comparison in terms of rates of findings. Note that what is generally enumerated here is 
charges, not individual complainants.  Most EEOC cases involve multiple charges (e.g., one complainant 
can bring charges involving race, age, sex, disability and retaliation).  

And, of course, comparative data does not tell us what the “correct” merit rate is on these or other 
types of claims.  But comparisons are always instructive.

Thanks again for a great meeting.  

Emily

--------------------------------------------------

Emily A. Spieler
Chair
Whistleblower Protection Advisory Committee
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
U.S. Department of Labor

Edwin W. Hadley Professor of Law
Northeastern University School of Law
400 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02118
Mobile: 617-930-1510
Email: e.spieler@neu.edu 

On sabbatical leave, 2012-2013:
Visiting Scholar
Institute for Work and Employment Research
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02142


