By Barbara Frankel
In all likelihood, the government will resolve the budget issues, and the automatic $1.2 trillion in budget cuts known as sequestration won’t be triggered in the first week of March. But if it happens, there’s been web chatter about companies’ benefiting from EEOC cuts because there would be fewer discrimination lawsuits.
Actually, the exact opposite is true. I spoke with Gil Casellas, the former chairman of the EEOC, and Bob Gregg, an attorney who specializes in discrimination law and writes a monthly column for us. Your company’s potential for costly lawsuits is actually much higher if sequestration or other major budget reductions occur. The EEOC would lose between 6.5 percent and 8.2 percent of its budget ($23 million to $30 million), according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGA).
