Commentary: How to stem discrimination claims

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reported that discrimination claims have increased in the past decade and reached "historic" levels in the last couple of years. The EEOC attributes the significant rise in claims to multiple factors, including greater accessibility to the EE...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inDaily Journal of Commerce
Main Author Angel, Amy
Format Trade Publication Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Portland, Or BridgeTower Media Holding Company 25.02.2010
Subjects
Civil rights
Employees
Employers
Employment discrimination
Enforcement
Job classification
Labor law
Layoffs
Litigation
Terminations
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Summary:The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reported that discrimination claims have increased in the past decade and reached "historic" levels in the last couple of years. The EEOC attributes the significant rise in claims to multiple factors, including greater accessibility to the EEOC, poor economic conditions, increased diversity in the labor force, increased employee awareness of their rights and changes to the EEOC's intake practices. This effort includes expanding the ranks of experienced civil rights attorneys in the division, weighing in on private discrimination lawsuits via friend-of-the-court briefs and using "testers" to pose as applicants for housing or employment to determine an entity's compliance with discrimination laws. 2. Do not use layoffs to shed "problem" employees. Layoffs should be conducted based on the needs of the organization and objective criteria that can be documented. Once an employer decides how many positions are available within a certain department or job classification, it should use seniority or productivity levels to determine who stays. Don't target "problem" employees and use a layoff to terminate their employment when it should have been done before documented performance problems.
ISSN:0896-8012