Oregon labor department urges feds to continue collecting workforce demographic data

Oregon’s employment rights agency is joining a coalition of states in opposing the federal government’s move to rescind a 60-year-old rule used to inform antidiscrimination practices in the workplace.

Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries — alongside similar labor and human rights agencies from Washington D.C., Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York — submitted last week a joint letter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission urging it to preserve its rule requiring private employers to report the demographics of their employees. 

Since 1966, the commission has tracked job titles along with the religion, sex, race and ethnicity of employees across most private workplaces. The publicly-accessible data identifies workplace trends and finds patterns of discrimination — such as how women make up 34% of executive or senior level positions in Oregon, or that Hispanic people make up 34% of the state’s manual laborers and managers.

But in July, the commission in a 2-1 vote voted to rescind the rule requiring the demographic  data collection and reporting, removing a tool that for years has informed the public about patterns of representation across industries, regions and occupations. 

Eliminating the data collection requirement won’t stop workplace discrimination or reduce employers’ administrative or financial burden, the leaders of each states’ labor rights agency said in their joint letter.

“It will only weaken civil rights enforcement and keep the promise of equal employment opportunity out of reach for America’s workers,” they wrote.

Federal agency originally established to eliminate workplace discrimination 

When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning racial segregation, it also created the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency dedicated to eliminating unlawful employment discrimination. 

The commission may have up to five members, but it needs three for a quorum. There are currently two Trump-appointed Republicans, including chair Andrea Lucas, and one Biden-appointed Democrat on the commission. Trump radically transformed the commission’s make-up in the first few weeks of his second term, firing two commissioners and leaving only two remaining who, for months, were unable to vote on any policy matters. 

The Republican commissioners argued that reporting employee demographics encourages employers to discriminate against workers who are not considered minorities, Stateline reported. 

Oregon officials refute that claim. 

“When the federal government removes the data that reveals disparities, that doesn’t mean the disparities disappear; it means the people most harmed by discrimination are easier to ignore. We will not allow those workers to be pushed into the shadows,” said Oregon Labor Commissioner Christina Stephenson, in a statement. 

Taking away national demographic reporting only makes it harder for agencies and employers to see where inequities persist, according to Oregon Civil Rights Division Administrator Michael Wood.

“Without this data, we lose one of the most practical tools we have to identify problems early, focus resources effectively and prevent small issues from becoming systemic barriers,” he said in a statement. 

Legal experts say more states may start imposing their own kinds of demographic reporting requirements if the federal requirements end, or some states may ban employers from collecting that information, according to the Stateline report.