Discuss some of the protected characteristics covered by equal employment opportunity laws and why they are important in today’s employment setting.

Your discussion is to be submitted in 12-point Times New Roman font using APA format.  You must have a minimum of two sources to support your answer.

Students are required to post their primary response (200 word minimum) by Wednesday midnight. Students will respond to at least 1 other postings (150 words minimum each) by Sunday midnight.

Student response (vani katuri ) :

Equal employment opportunity is providing equal opportunity in hiring employees in an organization without any discrimination’s based on religion, race, sex, color or nationality. For this to be followed seriously, U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to protect employees from discrimination in united states, established the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Strict laws have been put in place to make sure these terms are followed in every state, federal or private organizations. It lets companies hire or promote employees based on their competency rather than discriminated based or race, religion or sex (2017).  Later this act was further modified and discrimination is prohibited based on terms including impairment, marital status, sex, race, religion, age, physical features, pregnancy, lawful sexual activity under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1995. Many employers have paid huge amounts and are still paying for violating these laws due to lack of knowledge or even due to not caring about these laws.

Disability: Employment considerations against individuals with disabilities without reasonable accommodation to perform the job has been prohibited in organizations. For this to be in effect , the passage of Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA) began in 1990(Mathis, Jackson, Valentine and Meglich 2017). According to this act, any individual with disabilities who can perform their essential job functions must not be discriminated. This means that any work that a disability individual can do, he or she must not be discriminated from the rest of others. It also prohibits use of pre-employment medical exams, except for drug tests until a job has been conditionally offered. 

Race/Ethnic/National Origin: Employment discrimination can occur based on a person’s race or ethnicity. They can be more subtle. According to a study, only 5% of LinkedIn users are black and 2% are Hispanic. Lack of access to these sites is indirectly referring to racial discrimination.

Conclusion: Even with these many Civil Rights Acts and Equal Employment Opportunity Acts, racial discrimination in work locations persists. It is the employers or organization’s responsibility to protect these laws at work locations and between their employees when hiring and even after hiring. This can be done by enabling strict laws internally in the organization as well as providing flexible and comfortable environment to people with certain disabilities. Except for places where high muscle power is needed, for example places where heavy lifting or longer work hours are needed, a gender discrimination cannot be allowed. This is because at places like these, men are usually preferred due to their physical characteristics that is more needed. Professions like these can be exempt due to their individual job requirements.  

References:

Robert L. Mathis, John H. Jackson, Sean R. Valentine, Patricia A. Meglich, (2017) “ Human

Resource Management”,15TH edition.

Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972. Encyclopedia of Business and Finance, 2nd ed

Retrieved October 31, 2017 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/finance/finance-and-accounting-magazines/equal-employment-opportunity-act-1972