July,
2007
|
| ARE YOU GUILTY OF 'UNCONSCIOUS DISCRIMINATION?' |
 |
|
EEOC has begun E-RACE, a program to root out managers who discriminate in hiring or promotion while possibly being unaware that they're even doing it.
HR managers at two of America's largest retailers, Walgreens and Wal-Mart, must be in a state of shock these days.
After years of what they believe was compliance with both the letter and spirit of anti-discrimination efforts, both companies have been hit with massive class action suits for - you guessed it - discrimination.
Walgreens has been accused by some of its African-American workers of assigning them, far out of proportion to their number, to stores in poor neighborhoods. And some two million women at Wal-Mart have claimed in a class-action suit that they've been unfairly treated in both hiring and promotion. Both companies deny the accusations.
The reason this alleged conduct occurred? Unconscious discrimination.
Unconscious or, as it's sometimes called, implicit, unexamined, or systematic discrimination occurs, say plaintiffs' attorneys, when management hires or promotes on the basis of subtle, ingrained biases against certain groups. These biases are based on stereotypes or other preprogramming of their attitudes in ways they are often not even aware of. Discrimination also occurs, on an institutional level, when the biases are built into formal hiring programs or systems.
One example, cited by attorney Joan Williams of the Center for WorkLife Law in
California, and as reported by Scripps News, is the female lawyer who works full-time and is away from her desk. She's assumed to be at a meeting. But change that lawyer's status to part-time and the exact same absence is assumed to be for taking care of a child.
"Suddenly her job evaluations go bad," Williams says. "That's the face of discrimination today."
Private organizations have been joined by the EEOC in warring on this new interpretation of how discrimination can happen. The agency has launched an initiative called Eradicating Racism and Colorism from Employment (E-RACE). Under the plan, the agency will use its enforcement muscle to punish hiring practices that suppress any class of applicants because of preconceived notions about the group as a whole, as well as those that fail to fully explore all available applicant pools, including those made up of minority groups.
One practice specifically frowned upon, says the agency in a Law.com report, is rejecting an applicant on the basis of name, arrest and conviction records, or credit scores ... often even before meeting the individual. This can happen as new electronic recruiting systems process large numbers of applications without allowing for individual explanations of what's on them.
This is discrimination because some ethnic groups have lower credit scores or more frequent criminal records. This, however, says nothing about any individual in that group. The agency's position is that every individual must be considered as such from the start of the process, and hired or rejected only on objective criteria.
Some in the employment law community are dubious about the validity of prosecuting employers for unconscious discrimination. They also believe that translating the concept into regulatory action can have negative, unintended consequences. |
|
| PIRATES OF THE WORKPLACE FRIDGE: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
| |
|
Did the person who took your sandwich from the workplace fridge simply make an innocent mistake or are there deeper issues at play? A clinical psychologist says it is the latter.
Carolyn Kaufman tells Andrea Kay, a columnist with the Gannett News Service, that while people pilfer from the workplace fridge for a variety of reasons, all of them know what they are doing: taking food that they didn't bring to the office.
She tells Kay that some workers see the company refrigerator as a place where the food is up for grabs because someone probably has forgotten it and would never miss it.
Other pilferers have a sense of entitlement and believed they are owed something, Kaufman says. Workers with a sense of entitlement? No way!
For some workers, it's about feeling a sense of power in a place where they may have little, she says.
Some pilferers find comfort in the anonymity of it, Kaufman says.
"Research shows that people do things they otherwise wouldn't when they feel anonymous," she tells Kay.
When caught, they rely on one of two excuses: (1) They mistook, say, that sandwich with smoked turkey, Swiss cheese, avocado, tomato, fried onions, and roasted red peppers on pita bread as theirs or (2) they were going to replace it, Kay notes.
If you have had a rash of thefts from your workplace fridge, maybe you can try hanging an image of someone watching near your fridge, reminding workers to be sure they are taking their food and not someone else's. |
|
| AROUND THE USA
|  |
|
SURVEY SAYS WORKERS ONLY GET 80% OF WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO THEM
The results of BLR's National Employee Attitude Survey (NEAS) reveal that overall workers only get 80% of what's important to them in the workplace. While the survey reveals that employees are generally committed to doing a good job and fulfilling their obligations to customers and their employers, it also reveals that most companies don't meet employee expectations for communication and teamwork. This is especially true for interdepartmental communication and teamwork.
NEW FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE RATES
The current Federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour will increase to $7.25 over two years.
Effective Date
July 24, 2007
July 24, 2008
July 24, 2009
|
Federal Minimum Wage
$5.85 per hour
$6.55 per hour
$7.25 per hour |
|
|
|
|