The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plays a key and manifestly protective role in the labor sphere. As a proven source on labor law notes, the EEOC “oversees equal employment in the federal workplace.”
The term “equal employment” cannot be quickly or simply defined. Indeed, a veritable universe of legal texts, statutory/case law and other materials exists to address it. Equality in the work realm is aspirational; although it is critically important to achieve it, the fact is that not all workers are treated in the same above-board and fair manner.
Which means this: They suffer on-the-job wrongs marked by adversely disparate treatment. They are discriminated against based on one or more select attributes that distinguish them.
In a word, they are subjected to harassment.
The EEOC duly takes note of any such conduct singling out an individual worker or class of employees. Its website prominently pegs workplace harassment as “unwelcome conduct” that is “intimidating, hostile or offensive to reasonable people.”
The EEOC underscores that harassing behaviors target specific workers identifying with categories/classifications that are protected under multiple federal laws. Chief among them are the seminal Civil Rights Act (specifically, its Title VII), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Collectively, those and related laws safeguard equal workplace rights for individuals targeted by harassing behaviors because of their race, national origin, religion, gender, age (40 or older), sexual orientation, disability and other identifying traits.
An EEOC webpage strongly calls out the illegal nature of harassing workplace conduct. And it notes that employers are automatically subject to liability and damages for it when it yields a negative employment result for a worker.
An experienced and empathetic pro-worker employment law legal team can provide further information.