The shadowy federal agency that wants to know what you’re buying with your credit card finds itself the subject of wide-ranging discrimination allegations.
Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau charge that a culture of sexism, ageism and racism permeates the quasi-governmental agency.
Two CFPB whistleblowers recently testified before the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
Democratic members of the committee attempted to turn the tables on the whistleblowers, charging that anyone complaining of discrimination in an agency created by the Obama White House is quite clearly racist.“The opposite side of the aisle hates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the committee’s ranking member. “They would like to destroy it. We have to take pause when it appears that (Republicans) would simply like to use discrimination as a way by which they continue to attack the bureau.”
But Senior Equal Employment Specialist Florine Williams testified that in 32 years of government services she had never seen anything like the discrimination that persists at the CFPB.
There have been reports of pervasive racial comments, and some cases of extreme gender-compensation inequality.
Whistleblowers have said female CFPB employees earn as little as 60 percent of the wages paid to men doing comparable work.
One of CFPB’s core functions is to enforce laws that “outlaw discrimination and other unfair treatment in consumer finance.”
“How can an agency founded on principles of equality and fairness carry out its mission when it can’t even protect its own employees from the very practices it seeks to abolish?” said U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wisconsin, chairman of the Financial Service subcommittee.
Employees testified that the CFPB’s atmosphere is “soulless” and that their complaints have fallen on deaf ears for several years..."
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