Equal Employment Opportunity

The mission of the Equal Employment Opportunity Program is to promote equal opportunity in employment for all employees and applicants for employment, and to contribute to a discrimination-free workplace that embraces diversity and inclusion.  We implement, support, and educate the workforce about the laws and policies mandating equal opportunity for all individuals, irrespective of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or reprisal (prior EEO activity).  We proactively respond to the needs of the Fort Hamilton workforce and its leadership by promoting an inclusive and respectful work environment and fostering a professional culture that values diversity and productive conflict resolution in support of the WSMR mission.  The EEO Office advises the Garrison Commanders on EEO and affirmative employment, processes EEO complaints filed by employees, assists employees and managers with requests for reasonable accommodation of disabling conditions, and provides EEO training to the Fort Hamilton workforce.

The EEO office offers these four common levels of services: provides compliance and program services, provides advisory services, manages EEO complaints processing, provides training and education. These services are available to all of the Garrison mission partners.

We serve any Army organization on this installation that would like for us to, several have their own EEO office that is responsible for policy and procedure, but we take care of training and compliance activity and anything they would like for us to do within these areas. Those organizations not under the Army per se have their own EEO offices, like the Corps of Engineers.

The office's management of the EEO complaint process includes both informal and formal complaint processing.

All of our people are certified counselors and we have certified mediators, too. Certified mediators are responsible for the Alternate Dispute Resolution program. Those would be the things we work on in the complaint processing.

Who can file an EEO complaint? Any employee, former employee, or applicant for employment who believes that he or she has been discriminated against because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, and/or reprisal in an employment matter, including Equal Pay Act complaints, subject to the control of the Army, may initiate the EEO complaint process.

People who come to us and try to work things out right away have the most success. The quicker someone comes to us with a complaint, the easier it is to work it out.

We always want people to feel comfortable and not feel like they have to have a complaint to come see us. We have a lot of training information and are willing to work with organizations' employees as well as managers to help them gain knowledge of what we do and how we may be able to help them.