May 21: EEOC moves to scrap EEO-1 reporting

Good Thursday morning. Before HR news, some breakfast news:

Banana coffee is, apparently, a thing now. Dunkin's spring menu includes a Banana Puddin' Cloud Latte, a Banana Daydream Refresher, a Bananarama Matcha, and a Bananaberry Protein Daydream Refresher. All real.

—Jake

What's happening: On Thursday, May 14, the EEOC sent a proposal to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to rescind EEO-1, EEO-2, EEO-3, EEO-4, and EEO-5 reporting requirements. The rule, RIN 3046-AB37, would also eliminate the agency's data-collection obligations under Title VII, the ADA, GINA, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

State of play: EEO-1 currently requires demographic reporting from private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees meeting certain criteria. It has been the federal government's primary workforce-demographics dataset since 1966. The EEOC has not issued a public statement on the proposal. Once OIRA clears the rule, it heads to the Federal Register for public comment before finalization.

The big picture: If the proposal is finalized, two things change for employers: the federal demographic-reporting requirement ends, and the dataset used for outside analyses of pay equity and workforce representation is no longer collected. State-level reporting (California's pay-data report, Illinois) operates under separate authority.

What's happening: Lorrayne Mavromatis, who was hired by Beast Industries in August 2022 as head of Instagram and eventually promoted to a $250,000 role overseeing the Verticals division (a roughly 20-person team with a $500,000 monthly budget), filed a complaint against MrBeastYouTube, LLC and GameChanger 24/7, LLC on Wednesday, April 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The suit alleges FMLA violations, pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and wrongful termination. Beast Industries' response to Variety, verbatim: "This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it."

Of note: Beast Industries is the company built around the largest YouTube channel in the world (roughly 480 million subscribers). The case is Mavromatis v. MrBeastYouTube, LLC, in the E.D.N.C.

⚖️ A.G. Equipment Co., a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma compressor packaging manufacturer, agreed to a $4.25M EEOC settlement (announced May 18) for firing 43 unvaccinated workers on October 15, 2021 after telling them "no exemptions would be permitted for any reason." Case 24-cv-00403-SEH (N.D. Okla.). The three-year consent decree mandates Title VII and ADA manager training and EEOC reporting on future accommodation requests.

⚖️ The 6th Circuit ruled in Tumbleson v. Lakota Local School District (May 13) that offering unpaid leave for guide-dog training was a reasonable ADA accommodation for Andrea Tumbleson, an Ohio art teacher with Usher syndrome and retinitis pigmentosa. She could not point to nondisabled employees who received paid sick leave for non-qualifying absences. The court also rejected her argument that the FMLA required the district to allow accrued paid sick leave to substitute for unpaid FMLA leave.

📊 Per Glassdoor's Q1 2026 reporting, burnout mentions in employee reviews are up 65% year over year, and workers are now mentioning burnout 2.5 times more often than they did pre-pandemic. Glassdoor flagged nonprofit, healthcare, and technology as the sectors with the steepest increases in exhaustion since 2019.

💼 Recruit Holdings (Indeed parent) FY2025 results, released May 15: U.S. ARPJ (average revenue per job) grew 17% year over year even as total U.S. job postings on Indeed declined approximately 7%. CEO Hisayuki Idekoba on AI in the earnings call: "Our AI tools are driving significant revenue growth and operational efficiency, positioning us for continued success."

What's happening: A coalition of activist investors (Trillium Asset Management, SOC Investment Group, and Mercy Investment Services) sent a May 13 letter to fellow Target shareholders, filed with the SEC on May 14 under form PX14A6G, urging votes against reelecting Executive Chair Brian Cornell and Lead Independent Director Christine Leahy at Target's June 10 annual meeting.

State of play: The letter's primary thrust is financial and governance. Net sales declined year over year for nine of the last twelve fiscal quarters, store traffic slowed for ten of twelve months in 2025, and the coalition opposes Cornell's retention as Executive Chair and Special Advisor after Michael Fiddelke's promotion to CEO, arguing it "creates inherent ambiguity in leadership authority." Board independence drops from 91.6% to 83.3% following the 2026 AGM. The HR-relevant items in the same letter: the "rollback of its DEI initiatives," the "decision to pull back its Pride collection," and what the coalition calls Target's "limited public response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities at certain store locations."