New York--The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission isshifting its focus from small individual cases to larger systemicissues--some across entire industries, an official warned a meetingof insurance professionals yesterday.

EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru said the changed emphasis wasresources are limited to fight all potential employmentdiscrimination battles.

He spoke in New York at the Employment Practices and FiduciaryLiability Symposium of the Minneapolis-based Professional LiabilityUnderwriting Society where he urged brokers and insurers to useavailable data to evaluate insureds and clients whose policiescould make them targets.

Mr. Ishimaru while explaining the new direction did predictspecifically what industries or large companies might be earmarkedfor investigation.

He also noted that the EEOC will be stepping up efforts tobolster resources at weaker EEOC local district offices thathaven't been active enough in the past.

Mr. Ishimaru revealed a personal desire to have the agencyexplore the use of testers as decoys to uncover discriminatoryhiring practices, another area where EEOC historical chargestatistics reveal limited past success.

The Washington-based EEOC announced April 4 that it had adoptedthe recommendations from an internal task force led by CommissionerLeslie Silverman that would make the fight against "systemicdiscrimination" an agencywide top priority.

In announcing its strengthened "nationwide approach toinvestigating and litigating systemic cases," the EEOC defined"systemic cases" as "pattern or practice, policy and class caseswhere the alleged discrimination has broad impact on an industry,profession, company or geographic location."

At the PLUS meeting yesterday, Commissioner Ishimaru toldinsurers and brokers in attendance, "We need to choose our targetscarefully--especially in litigation.

"And I believe, from a law enforcement agency standpoint, weneed to make sure that we get as broad and as big a bang for ourbuck as possible."

To change attitudes and deter bad behavior in employmentpractices, targets must be bigger than they've been in the past, hesaid.

At a meeting in Washington last week, during which the EEOCconsidered and adopted the recommendations of the task force report(www.eeoc.gov/about eeoc/task_reports/systemic.html), the keyquestion addressed, Mr. Ishimaru said, was how the EEOC could"better work at...going after pattern of practice cases--the biggercases."

A concerned corporate defense attorney in the audience askedwhat industries and big companies are on the EEOC's hit list.

"If our program was working as well as it should [in the past],I guess I could have answered that question," Commissioner Ishimarusaid.

He noted that one component of the revitalized systemic programwill involve having district offices pore through data to spotproblems within industries in their regions.

Most employers are required to file an EEO-1 report with EEOCthat breaks down race, gender and ethnic composition of employees,he said, noting that the EEO-1 statistics could be used to revealproblem employers and industries.

The commissioner encouraged brokers and insurers to use thistype of data themselves to measure risks and discover whichexisting clients and potential insureds could face futurelitigation.

He also suggested that the insurance industry participants thinkabout "matched testing" procedures to uncover discriminatory hiringpractices among insureds.

Such tests would be performed by having job applicants withsimilar resumes but different races or ethnic backgrounds apply forthe same jobs, he said.

"We are exploring ways as to how the agency possibly could usetesters directly or indirectly in enforcement," he related,suggesting, however, that politics might keep such efforts fromgetting off the ground.

"As one of two Democrats on the commission, I get one vote outof five, and Republicans control the body," he said. "But it'ssomething that I have raised repeatedly and something that peopleought to be thinking about," he said, expressing a hope thatcracking down of hiring discrimination would be one of the majorsuccesses of the program to fight systemic discrimination.