Some More Thoughts on Backlogs

I wanted to say one thing about this week's column about the impact of large inventories of unresolved cases at agencies like the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Backlogs like these don't build up out of nowhere. They're the product of circumstances and resource allocations, most definitely not of negligence, or ill-will.

For example, the EEOC projects that more than 100,000 private-sector complaints will get filed by the end of fiscal 2010, and that the total number of public- and private-sector complaints that have yet to get resolved will rise from 73,951 at the end of fiscal 2008 to 87,807 by the end of fiscal 2010, an increase of almost 14,000 cases. In fiscal 2009, the agency got to hire 155 new employees, and hopes to hire an additional 140 this fiscal year. The agency estimates that those new hires mean the agency will be able to process 15,000 more cases each year, an impressive rate. And EEOC's also going to target new training and guidelines at reducing the backlog.

Clearly, the agency has good intentions, and is putting its resources towards getting cases resolved. But situations like this also reveal the limits of both the appropriations process, and the market. In an ideal world, of course, EEOC would be able to hire staff based on demand: when complaints spiked, they'd have the authority and the money to hire exactly the number of staff they need to resolve complaints as quickly as they'd like. But of course they--and every other federal agency--don't have that luxury (or depending on how you put it, that basic freedom). They're dependent on a glacial appropriations process that appears to have no sense of urgency about agency needs, and requires them to think not just about what they need, but what they can make do with. And the truth is, EEOC workers aren't low-level service workers. They're highly educated and trained professionals; you need lead time to get them ready to do their jobs, so you can't count on hiring folks one day, putting them to work immediately, and then getting rid of them when you (think) you don't need them any more.

And really, ultimately, case loads are about the atmosphere in American workplaces, both public and private. Ideally, it would be great to have a full roster of closed-out cases, not just because it would make things easier for the EEOC, but because it would mean we'd have a workplace with less bias and discrimination.