Political strife brought Cari Dominguez to the United States from her native Havana when she was 12 years old. Her father, placed under house arrest by suspicious government officials, and brother stayed behind when she, her mother and two younger sisters moved to suburban Washington to live with an aunt.
A year later, her brother joined them. Them more strife came–the Cuban missile crisis. It was six years before her father was reunited with the family on U.S. soil.
In August, Dominguez was appointed by President Bush to serve a five-year term as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.
Schooled in employment-related matters, recruitment and workplace diversity during her private sector career as principal for Dominguez & Associates, a Maryland-based consulting firm she started in 1999, and in senior positions at Heidrick & Struggles and Spencer Stuart, two international executive search firms, in 1989, she joined the U.S. Department of Labor as assistant secretary for employment standards and later as director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
She led the department’s “glass ceiling initiative” to examine ways employers could remove barriers affecting the advancement of women and minorities.
Dominguez, very forthcoming about how she plans to protect the rights of workers of all ages, abilities, races, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, refuses to reveal her age. She is quick to point out that federal anti-discrimination laws protect people from having to answer that question.
She recently shared her thoughts on the EEOC’s fluid role in protecting the rights of America’s workforce. The following is an edited transcript:
Q. Forecasters predict severe labor shortages due to the aging of America’s workforce. Last year, age bias complaints to the EEOC rose sharply. What must employers do to prepare for the changes in the workforce?
A. Employers have got to be vigilant because this is the fastest growing segment of our charge activity. And the charges we’re getting aren’t traditional charging parties. A lot of white males over 50 are now using our resources because they’ve been affected through downsizings and layoffs. With the rising cost of health insurance and benefits, employers are looking at that and saying this is a very costly segment of our workforce. But it could be more costly to discriminate than it would be to pay those health-care plans.
Q. The Supreme Court has been reluctant to give age bias complainants the same rights as those charging race and gender bias. Is it difficult to prove an age bias claim?
A. If the evidence is there that but for their age, they wouldn’t have been affected in an employment decision, we have all the tools to prove discrimination. For example in the insurance industry, a lot of full-time employees are not being converted to agents because then the company is responsible for their health plans. Unfortunately, those decisions happen at a time when employees have been in place 20-something years, happen to be over 40 or closer to 50. It raises some questions.
Q. The number of claims filed with the EEOC have primarily held steady over the years. Shouldn’t complaints be declining at this point? What does that say about our society?
A. What is different is the nature of the charges. If you look back 10 years ago, it was failure to hire, a lot of promotional issues. Today, we’re seeing a lot more retaliation, harassment and wrongful termination. So the issues are changing.
Q. The Supreme Court of the United States has been criticized for severely limiting the protections under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Do you agree?
A. We don’t see the decisions that came out of the Supreme Court session as really having a negative impact on our ability to enforce the ADA. I think it’s a matter of interpretation. The disability determination continues to be a case-by-case assessment of the person’s impairment and its effect. It’s really not at all different from the way we interpret it.
Q. The high court recently ruled that undocumented workers are not entitled to back pay in discrimination cases. How has this decision impacted this group?
A. There’s great concern within the Hispanic as well as the Asian community that this will have a chilling effect on the ability of people who believe they’re being discriminated against to come forward. Our position is (that) regardless of whether you’re documented or undocumented, the law of the land applies the same and the protection against undocumented workers is the same. The difference under the Supreme Court decision is (that) once discrimination is identified, what the person is entitled to as part of remedial relief is different. An individual who is undocumented is not entitled to back pay remedies. All other forms of remedies they would be entitled to.
Q. Why do you support using mediation to settle discrimination claims?
A. Mediation is an efficient way to settle disputes before both the charging party and the respondent becomes entrenched in their positions. The longer a dispute festers, the harder it is to move people from their positions. In mediation, the two parties are in control of the process. It’s mutual and not very time consuming. When we put employment disputes through mediation, it takes about 84 days to settle those disputes as opposed to 182 days to process a charge.
Q. Earlier this year, the EEOC launched the “Freedom to Compete” campaign featuring Olympic athletes. What’s the campaign’s message?
A. It really is the freedom to compete in the workplace on a level playing field. That’s how people punch their ticket in the workplace and move up. The campaign gets at the issues that may not necessarily come to the EEOC in the form of a charge. There are invisible barriers out there. This is to encourage employers to examine their practices in a self-directed manner. Sometimes upper level executives have this image about how they’re organizations are working. Then you go two levels down and you find out that’s not really happening.
Q. In April, you announced the EEOC would be holding a series of workshops for small businesses on hiring people with disabilities. Why does bias against the disabled persist?
A. I think part of the problem is there’s concern about the cost of providing reasonable accommodations. Studies have shown that the average cost of providing a reasonable accommodation is $100. I think there may be a lack of comfort level. How do I address you if you’re hearing impaired or blind? What kinds of questions do I ask and not ask? We find that a lot of it is educating the employers.
Q. Is there still a glass ceiling in corporate America?
A. I do think that this is something that remains a part of corporate America. There has been progress. During the glass ceiling initiative, we started asking questions about organizational culture and how people were brought in to senior levels. For the first time, a federal agency talked about issues that related not only to entry-level issues but the quality of work life. That was a shift in our conversation. For 25 years, we were worried about getting them in.
