Meeting of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
EEOC Mediation Program and the Workplace Benefits of Mediation
December 2, 2003
I am a strong advocate for the EEOC mediation program, especially the Baltimore district office managed by Marie Sciscione. I have not always been a supporter of mediation. Prior to working for Safeway, I did not ever use mediation as a way to resolve EEOC charges of discrimination. I believed that if the company had done nothing wrong, why would the company mediate and agree to a resolution?
When I came to Safeway in 2001 I learned about mediation and the fact that Safeway was an advocate of the process. I was a bit skeptical, but began to attend mediations with our in-house counsel and started to see that this was a very interesting and value-added process.
As a result, Safeway has entered into a Universal Agreement to mediate with the Baltimore district of the EEOC, and since 2001, has been able to successfully mediate 90% of its EEOC cases. The professionalism of Marie Sciscione and her team of mediators has made this process exceptionally worthwhile, and I would highly recommend it to any company that has a charge filed against them. As a result of mediation, we are able to keep our pending EEOC claims to a minimum and avoid the time and money it takes to investigate and respond to a claim.
This page was last modified on December 2, 2003.