At the beginning of every year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports statistics on types of charges filed by employees and former employees over the course of the preceding year. These statistics help employers self-audit and focus on policies and practices they need to revisit to avoid becoming part of the following year’s statistics. The charge numbers released by the EEOC for 2014 show the following breakdowns by bases alleged in descending order.

• Retaliation under all statutes: 37,955 (42.8 percent of all charges filed); nearly half of all charges filed!
• Race (including racial harassment): 31,073 (35 percent)
• Sex (including pregnancy and sexual harassment): 26,027 (29.3 percent)
• Disability: 25,369 (28.6 percent)
• Age: 20,588 (23.2 percent)
• National Origin: 9,579 (10.8 percent)
• Religion: 3,549 (4.0 percent)
• Color: 2,756 (3.1 percent)
• Equal Pay Act: 938 (1.1 percent) but note that sex-based wage discrimination can also be charged under Title VII’s sex discrimination provision
• Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act: 333 (0.4 percent)

This blog is presented under protest by the law firm of Ervin Cohen & Jessup LLP.  It is essentially the random thoughts and opinions of someone who lives in the trenches of the war that often is employment law–he/she may well be a little shell-shocked.  So if you are thinking “woohoo, I just landed some free legal advice that will fix all my problems!”, think again.  This is commentary, people, a sketchy overview of some current legal issue with a dose of humor, but commentary nonetheless; as if Dennis Miller were a lawyer…and still mildly amusing.  No legal advice here; you would have to pay real US currency for that (unless you are my mom, and even then there are limits).  But feel free to contact us with your questions and comments—who knows, we might even answer you.  And if you want to spread this stuff around, feel free to do so, but please keep it in its present form (‘cause you can’t mess with this kind of poetry).  Big news: Copyright 2015.  All rights reserved; yep, all of them.

If you have any questions about this article, contact the writer directly, assuming he or she was brave enough to attach their name to it.  If you have any questions regarding this blog or your life in general, contact Kelly O. Scott, Esq., commander in chief of this blog and Head Honcho (official legal title) of ECJ’s Employment Law Department, at (310) 281-6348 or kscott@ecjlaw.com.