The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency responsible for enforcing this nation's workplace discrimination laws, has suffered through five years of level funding. During this time EEOC has lost 25% of its staff by attrition during a multi-year hiring freeze. The remaining skeleton crew at the EEOC cannot keep up with the escalating filings of charges of discrimination that reached a record high in 2008. Due to the imbalance between staff and workload, EEOC is now facing a backlog of almost 74,000 cases. The FY09 funding level passed by the House for EEOC is $350,424,000 million. This is $8.5 million above the President's request of $342 million, which was passed by the Senate. The additional funding in the House bill is intended to put the EEOC on track to begin reducing its case backlog. Please help convince your Senators to support adopting the House version of EEOC's budget in conference.

Please go to http://www.senate.gov/. In the top right hand corner follow the drop-down menu to find your state's two senators and then cut and paste the following message into their webmail forms:

Dear Senator,

I am writing today to urge you to speak to your colleagues in support of passage of the House version of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) budget, which includes an additional $8.5 million above the administration's request, which was passed by the Senate. This additional funding is desperately needed to help EEOC dig itself out of its enormous backlog of almost 74,000 cases. EEOC has been unable to keep up with its work due to a record high receipt of 95,402 charges of discrimination in 2008 and rock bottom staffing. Specifically, EEOC has lost 25% of its workforce to attrition during a multiyear hiring freeze. In 2009, EEOC's workload will further increase as it takes on additional enforcement authority for the newly passed Genetics Information Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendment Act.

Please help avert a crisis for American workers by adopting in conference committee the House version of EEOC's FY09 budget, i.e., $350,424,000 million.

Sincerely,