Gender equality plan at your agency

If you work for the government of Puerto Rico — an agency, a public corporation or a municipality — your employer is required by law to hold a written gender equality of opportunity plan, with a person named as coordinator and an internal mechanism for resolving discrimination complaints. Most public employees do not know that plan exists or who that person is, and that is precisely what makes this Act worth knowing: it gives you the name of a document you can ask for and of a post somebody has to be filling. The Act also adds a piece almost no bill of rights carries: periodic audits and personal fines on the nominating authority and the human resources chief for each breach detected.

The Act protects every employee or job applicant in the public service, without distinction of gender; Article 2 puts it that way, “regardless of gender,” although the text itself describes the plans as directed at identifying, evaluating, correcting and eradicating discriminatory treatment of working women and job applicants. Those bound are the agencies, public instrumentalities and municipalities or their entities and corporations. The private sector is not required to adopt plans under this Act; Article 3(h) only authorises offering training to private entities “that so request it.”

• Be an employee or job applicant at an agency, public instrumentality or municipality, or their entities and corporations (Article 3(b)).Verified against the official source

• Your agency’s Plan to Guarantee Equality of Employment Opportunity by Gender, which Article 3(d)(3) requires to be disseminated (Article 3(d)).

1. 1

   Step 1: What the Act demands of your agency

   Article 2 orders agencies, public instrumentalities and municipalities to develop and implement Affirmative Action Plans to guarantee no employee or applicant is discriminated against by reason of gender. Article 3(b) defines what those plans are: “managerial programmes that shall comprehensively implement the measures needed to identify, evaluate, correct and eradicate discriminatory treatment of working women and job applicants in the public service.” It is not a statement of intent: it is a document that must exist.

2. 2

   Step 2: The eight elements the plan must carry

   Article 3(d) lists them, and they serve as a checklist if you ask for the plan: an express statement of the agency’s commitment; the appointment of a coordinator, designated by each agency’s secretary or director; dissemination of the plan; statistical evaluation; goals and timetables for compliance; planning of affirmative actions to eliminate the so-called glass ceiling phenomenon, examining practices for promoting qualified women to leadership positions; development of programmes to achieve the goals, such as internal information systems for the follow-up, review and evaluation of every aspect of the plan and the resolution of gender discrimination complaints at agency level; and presentation of an annual progress report.

3. 3

   Step 3: Which decisions the plan has to reach

   This is what makes the plan concrete and worth quoting when you ask for it. Article 3(d) requires the plans to include “the appropriate mechanisms to eliminate arbitrary barriers in the procedures of recruitment, selection, appointment, examinations, transfers, promotions, seniority, progress lines and other terms and conditions of employment, strengthening the merit principle governing public employment in Puerto Rico.” That is: it covers not only hiring, but promotions, transfers and seniority.

4. 4

   Step 4: Where a gender discrimination complaint is resolved

   Here one must be exact, because it is easy to assume too much. This Act does not set up an employee complaint procedure before the supervising office. What it does is require each agency’s plan to include, among the Article 3(d)(7) programmes, “the resolution of gender discrimination complaints at agency level.” That is, the complaint mechanism lives inside your own agency and it is the plan that must describe it. What the supervising office does do, under Article 4(b), is periodic audits to ensure agencies comply with this Act.

5. 5

   Step 5: The fines, and who pays them

   Article 4(c) is the part with teeth. If irregularities or violations emerge from the audits, the supervising office may impose on nominating authorities administrative fines of one hundred dollars up to a maximum of five hundred, and on personnel or human resources chiefs fines of fifty up to a maximum of two hundred and fifty, for each breach detected. These are personal fines on the official, not on the agency. It also keeps the Office of Management and Budget and the Comptroller informed, and if it preliminarily determines the actions constitute a public offence it refers the evidence to the Secretary of Justice.

6. 6

   Step 6: The mitigating factors, and why they work only once

   Article 4(d) sets the criteria for the amount: the number of breaches in the period evaluated, gravity, prior patterns of breach, and who the fined official is. Article 4(e) adds mitigating factors that may reduce or remove the fine: that the agency present quick solutions, that it be the first time and immediately corrected, or a written agreement by the nominating authority to watch that it does not happen again. And it closes with a warning worth reading in full: “should additional breaches occur the fines shall be set at the maximum permitted in the legislation, without considering mitigating factors.”

7. 7

   Step 7: If you work in the private sector

   This Act does not require a private employer to adopt a plan. The only thing it carries for the private sector is Article 3(h): the supervising office shall offer training “in private entities that so request it,” to promote the implementation of plans and eliminate artificial barriers impeding women’s professional development. It is voluntary and on request. The general protections against discrimination in private employment come from other acts, outside this source.

The plan and its coordinator live inside your own agency, instrumentality or municipality; Article 3(d) requires it to be disseminated and that person to be named. Oversight belongs to the office the Act names as the Commission for Women’s Affairs, Office of the Governor, which the OGP compilation annotates as substituted by the Office of the Women’s Advocate. The Act creates no employee complaint window before that office: it gives it audits, reports and fines.

• Believing it binds private employers: it reaches agencies, public instrumentalities and municipalities; the private sector is only offered training on request.
• Looking in this Act for a complaint before the Advocate: Article 3(d)(7) places complaint resolution inside each agency’s plan.
• Thinking the fines are paid to the employee: they go to the General Fund, assigned to the Labour Department’s Anti-discrimination Unit.
• Assuming the fine falls on the agency: Article 4(c) fines the nominating authority and the human resources chief personally.
• Believing it covers only recruitment: the plan must reach transfers, promotions, seniority, progress lines and other conditions of employment.
• Relying on the mitigating factors more than once: should the breach repeat, the Act orders the maximum fine without considering them.
• Taking it for granted your agency’s plan is current: the Act sets no adoption deadline and we read no plan.
• Citing the Commission for Women’s Affairs as the office in force: the OGP compilation annotates it as substituted by the Office of the Women’s Advocate.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Oficina de la Procuradora de las Mujeres (OPM)

  Procuradora de las Mujeres

  bvirtualogp.pr.gov