ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 13, 1996 TAG: 9606130032
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
Angry speakers complained Wednesday of blatant racial discrimination in Roanoke Valley workplaces.
But the speakers - at a public forum sponsored by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - left the meeting disappointed.
Representatives of the nation's chief enforcement agency for anti-work discrimination laws, said roughly half of the complaints made against companies were idle for months before being assigned to an investigator. (moved this graph down in story, doesn't make sense here..sw)
The office of Sen. Charles Robb invited the public to meet with top EEOC officials serving this region, who are in town for a training session with employers today at the Roanoke Airport Marriott hotel.
At the start of Wednesday's two-hour meeting at City Hall, officials described the EEOC as the enforcer of laws prohibiting job discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion or sex. It strives to win back pay and other compensation for discrimination victims through negotiation or court action.
The EEOC also fights work-related bias based on disabilities and age, and strives to ensure men and women who do the same work get the same pay. Recently, the agency brought charges of mass sexual harassment of women against the Normal, Ill., plant of Mitsubishi Manufacturing of American Inc.
But EEOC representatives said roughly half of the complaints made against companies were idle for months before being assigned to an investigator.
At the Roanoke meeting, a few vocal members of the 35-person audience accused the agency of being biased against workers who bring discrimination complaints, and of favoring employers. Some advocated eliminating the agency because of its alleged ineffectiveness.
Durwin Bonds, who said he moved to Roanoke from Baltimore, said he found racism in both places, but that the bias is more overt in this area. "Up North, you have to unmask it. Down here, they just come right out with it," Bonds said.
Perneller Chubb-Wilson, president of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, urged the officials to crack down much harder on area companies because some "just don't care anymore." She said one Roanoke retailer fired three blacks in two recent weeks.
"You need to come in here and tell these people to shape up or ship out," said Chubb-Wilson, standing and raising her voice. "White people are tired of it, also."
Barbara Veldhuizen, deputy director of the EEOC office in Baltimore and the lightning rod for the complaints, confessed to being unhappy with the agency herself.
Due to its excessive workload, the Richmond EEOC office, which serves most of Virginia except Northern Virginia and Tidewater, has no investigator to assign to 53 percent of 1,100 pending complaints, about 125 of which originated in the Roanoke area. The average case takes 101/2 months to resolve.
The primary cause of the backlog is shortage of funding, Veldhuizen said. But she also said the agency is fair to all sides in a dispute, and that she and her staff work daily to improve service to those wronged by employers.
"We will continue to try," she said.
"That's not good enough," replied Rev. Lenord Hines of Faith Full Gospel Church in Roanoke.
Veldhuizen said after the meeting that there is a "general level of frustration" across society about the EEOC and that the comments she heard in Roanoke were not new to her.
Right now, the agency is receiving public comment on whether it should continue devoting resources first to those cases involving mass discrimination, retaliation or related to the Americans with Disabilities Act. That's where it believes it can have the most impact, she said
Across the nation - and possibly also in Roanoke - about half of all complaints made to the EEOC have been filed by blacks who claim they have been fired because of their race, Veldhuizen said.
She made a pledge to the group to try to compile a list of Washington, D.C.-area lawyers who are willing to come to Roanoke and take up discrimination cases that the EEOC rejects.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 linesby CNB