Karen Heiser, vice president of the Federal Managers Association’s Chapter 88 – Watervliet Arsenal, argued that managers and supervisors remain subject to a system that forces them to question making decisive management decisions out of fear of retaliation.
She said a big problem is the inability to head off frivolous claims from being taken through the process — citing that, for example, of the 22,974 cases closed by the EEOC in 2005, just 345 were found to have discrimination.
She said FMA remains uncertain as to whether a proposal to consolidate the various independent appellate agencies into one Federal Employee Appeals Court — as put forward by the Senior Executives Association last year — would adequately addresses the problems with the current processes or simply consolidate them into a larger federal agency.
Heiser called for streamlining the EEOC process and putting more stringent standards in place for employee claims.
She called on the committee to focus on the need for someone to have the initial authority to dismiss allegations of management wrongdoing when there is clearly no merit to the allegation and to allow only an appeal of that decision by one other body.