Employment Discrimination

Employment Discrimination Research

From our textbook of Canadian Human Resource Management, discrimination is defined as:" a showing of partiality or prejudice in treatment; specific action or policies directed against the welfare of minority groups." (Canadian Human Resource Management, p177). In today's business environment, it is really common to discriminate employees against the law whether direct or indirect. Employment discrimination law is set up to protect employees from discriminations based on race, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability, pardoned convicts, harassment, employer retaliation, and enforcement.

Normally, intentional direct discrimination on groups specified in the human rights legislation is illegal. However, under certain circumstances intentional direct discrimination is acceptable. A fashion store catering to women will be allowed to advertise for female models, and schools controlled by religious groups are permitted to limit their hiring to members of the specific faith. This legal discrimination is called bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) (Canadian Human Resource Management, p177). The BFOQ discrimination is common happened thing in the company that employee thought he or she might be treated unfairly. However, it is an exception of discrimination that some jobs or workplaces have restrictions in hiring people. For example, a blind people can not be hired to drive a truck, and a deaf people can not be an operator in the company.

Indirect, unintentional, or systemic discrimination takes place if there is no intention to discriminate, but the system, arrangements, or policies allow it to happen. Such employment practices may appear to be neutral and may be implemented impartially, but they exclude specific groups of people for reasons that are not job-related or required for safe or efficient business operations (Canadian Human Resource Management, p177). It is a less obvious way of discrimination which always occurs internally. With indirect discrimination, employer can argue that there may be a kind of discrimination, but that is required for the job. It is complicated to define an indirect discrimination because it is more difficult to detect and to fight as it often is hidden and requires a specific effort to deal with it effectively. Indirect discrimination does not occur frequent, but in some conditions, such as minimum height and length requirement, minimum scores on the employment tests, internal hiring policies, and so on, are typical examples of indirect discrimination that employers may make on their employees.

In this research paper, it will cover six different kinds of discriminations which happened in various types of human resource practices, such as hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, compensation, and various types of harassment.

Race and Colour

Race is generally defined as a person's ancestry or ethnic characteristics. Different people have different race and colour, which means that it is illegal to discriminate people based on their race or colour. From the statistics of The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in the fiscal year of 2004, EEOC received 27,696 charges of race discrimination and resolved 29,631 race charges in FY 2004, and recovered $61.1 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation). The EEOC has observed an increasing number of color discrimination charges. Color bias filings have increased by 125% since the mid-1990s, from 413 in FY 1994 to 932 in FY 2004.These numbers show that the number of racial discrimination increases quickly between the 1994 and 2004, which means that we should spend more time to deal with employees' requirements in order to reduce these huge numbers.

National or Ethnic Origin

National discrimination happens when employer discriminates employee because of where he or she was born. National and race discriminations are kind of relative actions during the working process. According to the EEOC statistics, in Fiscal Year 2004, EEOC received 8,361 charges of national origin discrimination. Including charges from previous years, 8,943 charges were resolved, and monetary benefits for charging parties totaled $22.3 million (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation). It is a small number compares to the race discrimination, and keeps going down from the previous year. It is illegal for human resource decisions to be influenced by the national or ethnic origins of applications or of their forebears. Hence, we should reduce this kind of discrimination.

Religion

In Fiscal Year 2004, EEOC received 2,466 charges of religious discrimination. EEOC resolved 2,676 religious discrimination charges and recovered $6.0 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation). A person's religious beliefs and practices should not affect employment decisions. An employer must accommodate an employee's religious practices, unless those practices present undue hardship to the employer.

Age

The use of age as an employment criterion has also received considerable attention in the past. Many employers consider that the laying down of minimum or maximum ages for certain jobs is justified, although evidence is rarely available that age is an accurate indication of one's ability to perform different type of works. As the EEOC reported, in Fiscal Year 2004, it received 17,837 charges of age discrimination, resolved 15,792 age discrimination charges in FY 2004 and recovered $60.0 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation). However, there is an exception in the age discrimination. The law makes this exception when employee comes to