Everyone enjoys rooting for underdogs. In fact, some people even go so far as to work for them. And nobody offers more jobs that empower you to fight for the little guy than America’s biggest employer – the federal government.
One agency that is helping the Davids of the world take on the Goliaths is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC’s mission is to protect U.S. workers from discrimination in the workplace.
One EEOC staffer who has taken on her share of giants in defense of workers’ rights is Elizabeth Grossman. Working with a small 7-member legal team and on behalf of more than 300 current and former female employees of Morgan Stanley, Ms. Grossman filed a sexual discrimination suit against the Wall Street giant in September 2001. She and her team laid out a simple case: there were few women executives at Morgan Stanley; they held lesser positions and earned lower compensation relative to men; and they experienced slower career advancement, all as a result of unlawful discrimination. After three years of arguing the case against Morgan Stanley’s entire in-house counsel team and more than two dozen lawyers from some of New York’s most high-powered private firms, Morgan Stanley entered into a $54 million Consent Decree, the EEOC’s second largest gender-bias settlement ever, and the largest with a Wall Street firm.
Ms. Grossman’s victory in EEOC v. Morgan Stanley is just one highlight of an impressive 12-year career in government. She has litigated more than 100 EEOC lawsuits, many of which established important legal precedents. Her settlement with Del Laboratories was the first sexual harassment case to provide more than $1 million in relief for the victims. As a result of EEOC v. Bell Atlantic, some 11,000 employees had credit for retirement restored after taking time off for pregnancy and maternity leaves. And partly due to her cases, companies no longer cap health benefits for workers with AIDS.
Her impressive record prompted The Wall Street Journal to name her on its list of 50 “women to watch.” While her litigating talents are in great demand, there’s no place she’d rather be working than at the EEOC. “Feeling like you’re doing the right thing 100 percent of the time is great,” said Grossman. “I’m never working on something that I don’t believe in.”
Taking on major corporations is not the only way people are making a difference at the EEOC. 33-year-old Lynn Clements left a lucrative position at the largest law firm in Maryland to work on employment law policy at the Commission. She identified young people as an underserved constituency of the EEOC and set out to establish a national education and outreach campaign to educate young people about their workplace rights and responsibilities.
Ms. Clements developed the Youth@Work initiative with a limited budget and a small team of EEOC interns. With a new Web site, targeted marketing materials and workshops in EEOC field offices across the country, Youth@Work benefits both young people and employers. The initiative enables young workers to enter and navigate the professional world, confident in their employer’s expectations of them and obligations to them. In particular, they learn how to protect themselves against workplace discrimination and the process for reporting unacceptable behavior. The initiative benefits employers because they gain a better informed workforce, enhancing the odds that the workplace will be free from inappropriate and illegal behavior. Another benefit of the program is reduced litigation. Furthermore, the initiative instills the importance of diversity, respect and tolerance in teens, who will carry this knowledge with them throughout their careers as workers and managers.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is just one of many places in the federal government where you work to protect the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens. The U.S. Department of Justice is the chief defender of civil rights in this country, and you might be interested in opportunities in their Civil Rights Division. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in the Department of Housing and Urban Development gives you a chance to fight back against landlords and lenders who discriminate.
So if you are interested in a rewarding job where you get to stand up for the rights of the little guy, consider a job with the EEOC or one of these other agencies. The Chicago Cubs may never win a World Series, but you can make sure that, at least sometimes, the underdog will come out on top.
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