Tennessee State Capitol (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
A legislative committee voted Wednesday to remove references to women, minorities, people with disabilities and veterans from Tennessee’s equal employment opportunity plan, which has long guided the state in tracking its own employment practices and rectifying discriminatory practices.
Beginning October 7, Tennessee will no longer formally track or publicly report on the demographics of individuals interviewed, hired or promoted to jobs in the executive branch of state government.
Also eliminated is a requirement that state agencies take steps to recruit, promote and hire women and minorities if they are underrepresented in the state government workforce.
The rule change drew pushback from Democrats, a minority on the Republican-dominated Joint Government Operations Committee.
“We won’t have the data to know if there’s a problem or not,” said Rep. G.A. Hardaway, a Memphis Democrat.
The rule redefines Tennessee’s so-called equal employment opportunity plan, which spells out data-gathering requirements for the executive branch.
The data has been used for decades to guide government hiring managers into proactively taking steps to find, recruit and hire qualified individuals from demographic groups that are underrepresented in the government workforce.
The plan was formerly described as “a statistical document that identifies patterns in the participation and utilization of women, minorities, individuals with disabilities and veterans in the workforce.”
The new definition describes the plan as a “statistical document which identifies and analyzes patterns in the participation and utilization of certain groups in the workforce, based on federal and/or state law requirements.”
The rule change was necessary to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order ending affirmative action in government employment for women and minorities and recent state laws that bar Tennessee from taking race, ethnicity, sex or age into account in employment decisions, according to Melanie Koewler, deputy general counsel for the state’s Department of Human Resources.
Koewler said the state of Tennessee will still be required to track its employment of veterans and people with disabilities under separate federal laws.
“If you recognize there are deficiencies with women or other socioeconomic groups, will you be able to address those with affirmative steps or not?” Hardaway asked.
If lawmakers or members of the public want to learn how many women or minorities occupy state jobs, they will have to ask, Koewler said.
“Any information that is a public record any citizen can request a report,” she said. “We would receive it and process it just like any other public records request.”
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