Receiving a Complaint from the EEOC

Answer:

As a knowledgeable Delaware County Employment Lawyer, clients come to me all the time with questions about what to do if you receive an Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) compliant.

If you receive in the mail a complaint from the EEOC, which is the federal government bureau that deals with complaints of discrimination, or the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, you have a duty to respond.

These commissions will conduct their own investigation into the complaint that’s been registered.

Let’s for the purposes of this argument say the individual is a female complaining of having been sexually harassed in the workplace. As a result of the harassment, she’s either quit her job, or deems their workplace so severe that she can’t keep going and fears she must address the issue to keep her job and not be terminated.

The EEOC generally doesn’t get that involved with complaints on a smaller scale. They are looking more for the larger companies that affect multiple employees as to whether their policy applies in a discriminatory manner.

If it’s a smaller-scale, individual type of complaint, it will usually be deferred to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. The company gets served with the complaint and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission then issues a request for information. This could be a request for information about the employee or about other complaints.

The Commission will want to know what your policies are and want to see if you have an employee manual. Then they’ll want to know what you know about the complaint.

In this example, you will have an obligation to respond. If you don’t, they’ll issue an order that is enforceable in court to show up with your documentation.

The best thing for you to do is to respond and to say to the EEOC, “Okay, I’ll talk to you and address this.”

You also have the opportunity to basically say, “I’m not interested in resolving this,” and they will defer it and issue a letter to the individual who made the complaint that says she has the right to sue the employer. At that point, they’re not going to be involved anymore because the employer is not involved.

If you as the employer, however, wish to participate in trying to resolve this before it reaches the lawsuit stage, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission will set up a mediation date. They may set up conferences in advance to exchange information, but they’ll also set up mediation.

At that point, a Human Relations officer will intervene in the process. If there are two lawyers involved, they’ll bring the lawyers in, they’ll bring the clients in, and they’ll try to work out what it is that can be done to resolve the complaint.

This may be accomplished by terminating the employee or resolving it in another, such as a transfer to another position — something to remove the circumstances that instigated the complaint.

At this point in time, the parties involved can chose to agree or disagree with the settlement proposal. There may be compensation involved, if the harassed individual has quit and doesn’t have another job, but mediation is a voluntary process, whereby you are mediating or trying to settle the case before it goes to the next level.

If it is not settled then what the Human Relations Commission will do is issue a right to sue letter, which gives the person who’s been harassed 90 days to file a complaint either in the Pennsylvania court or in the U. S. District court to make their allegations of what the complaint was, the violation of law was, what they believe their damage is, and what remedy they want. At that point, you’re in court and responding to the criteria of a judge and a jury or someone else who’s going to make the decision for you.

This educational video was brought to you by experienced Employment Attorney Paul Fellman. Our law firm proudly represents clients throughout Delaware County, as well as Pennsylvania, the greater Philadelphia area, and New Jersey.

If you have any questions about the next step after receiving an EEOC Complaint, please contact our Delaware County Employment Lawyers for a free case evaluation. Let our experience work for you.