EEOC leader outlines goals for 2022

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Charlotte Burrows outlined her accomplishments for the past year and what to expect in 2022 at a recent employer association meeting. Notably, after finishing the 2020 fiscal year (FY) at its lowest employment level ever, the agency hired 450 new employees before FY 2021 came to a close.

Burrows said key 2022 goals include strengthening the EEOC’s protections again systemic discrimination and continuing to provide guidance on COVID-19-related issues, including reli-gious and medical exemptions to the vaccine mandates. She also discussed the agency’s new arti-ficial intelligence (AI) initiative and noted her team is waiting for a National Academy of Science (NAS) report on the Component 2 pay data collection as well as next steps to combat pay dis-crimination and use pay data to focus enforcement.

Finally, Burrows noted the EEOC is working with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to combat retaliation. She added employers’ efforts to stop discrimination can be undone if employees are too concerned about retaliation to report any problems.

COVID-19 can be disability under ADA

On December 14, the EEOC provided new guidance (https://bit.ly/3cHhIm5) on when COVID-19 and its related issues can be considered a “disability” under the Americans with Disa-bilities Act (ADA). Basically, depending on the circumstances, an employee with the virus can meet the definition of disability.

Here are key points from the EEOC guidelines: