CHAPTER 15

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Nowadays we are living in a modern technology years. Many are advance but many are

behind too... And from those behinds, there is high percentage that people are very talented to be

equal to those advance. But why there are people that are placed advance? This is something that

equality can do.

Opportunity is a chance given to everyone but for only who does qualify in a certain

qualification. And for equality it has a huge definition and depends to the situation for you to find

it. For some who didn’t qualify, they can, at some point thought that the process could be unequal

but looking in the other side of the coin a certain job requires qualification to provide the

opportunity.

The opportunity is always given to those who qualified meaning there are employments

that requires standard.

What does equal job opportunity, job discrimination, and affirmative action means?

Equal job opportunity – is a labor policy that prohibits business from discriminating

against otherwise-qualified people with disabilities.

Job discrimination – refers to the unjust act of differentiating one group of people not

on the basis of personal merit but on the basis of partiality or bias.

Affirmative action – involves policies to increase opportunities for ethnic minorities by

favoring them in hiring and promotion, college admissions, and the awarding of government

contracts.
 Ethnic Minorities - a relatively small group of people, especially one commonly

discriminated against in a community, society, or nation, differing from others in race, religion,

language, or political persuasion.

1. Passive nondiscrimination – a willingness in hiring, promotion, and pay decisions to treat

the races and sexes alike.

2. Pure affirmative action – a concerted effort to enlarge the pool of applicants so that no one

is excluded because of past or present discrimination.

3. Affirmative action with preferential hiring – a company systematically favors minorities

and women in the actual decisions of enlarging its labor pool.

4. Hard quotas – a company specifies numbers or proportions of minority group members

that must be hired.

What is a better approach to the issue of job discrimination?

A company’s internal policies and practices should assure its employees that they will be free

from discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, language, religion, political, or other opinion,

national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

 Avoid showing preferential treatment or favoritism

 Compensatory justice/ Fair compensation

Is there discrimination here?

Sample situation:

A Quebec-based software company largely owned by a Canadian magnate was scouting

for a senior officer to head a department whose former head just retired. A Filipino assistant
manager who could not speak French knew the ropes around that department well enough, was

competent, hardworking, and very much deserving of the position.

Many of his colleagues were anticipating the position would be awarded to him. But to

everyone’s surprise, the position was instead given to another employee who was perceived by

majority as less qualified. The appointed one was a French-speaking Canadian, and that is why

most probably management promoted him to that job.

What are the Factors to consider?

Sison and Palma-Angeles think that it really depends on several factors, such as the following:

• Who his competitors are?

• What abilities his competitors have?

• How interviewers see him?

• How he performed during the exams and interviews

Is it easy to detect discrimination in the workplace?

It is not easy to detect whether or not there is discrimination in the workplace. Spotting

employment discrimination is a big headache because it is generally hard to know whether specific

individuals were actually discriminated against.

Examples:

 Firing pregnant women or injured person

 Not hiring people ages above 40

 Favoritism when issuing promotions

  Exclusion of candidates from the hiring process

 Suggestion of a preferred candidate on a job advertisement based on personal

characteristics

What are the elements of job discrimination? How do you know whether these elements

apply to a sample situation?

1. When a judgment, decision, or treatment is intended against anyone in the workers and

his/her particular group.

2. When a judgment, decision, or treatment springs from prejudice or bias, from false

stereotypes, or from other ways of unfair attitude aims at a particular group to which the

worker belongs.

3. When a judgment, decision, or treatment is disadvantageous or harmful to the worker

perhaps costing his/her job, promotion, or pay raise.

If these elements are present, then most likely discrimination happens.

Is there discrimination against women in the workplace?

More than one century have passed since we obtain our independence and yet we,

Filipinos do not have the freedom and some of the cultures of our colonizers were still in the

system. During the Spanish colonizers, women do not have the right to work. They believe that

women are fated to stay at home and take care of the family. It is one of the cultures that we

inherit from them.

Today, in the Philippine setting, there is still this kind of discrimination to women in the

workplace but can be mitigated.

 - It appears that women are routinely looked upon as the weaker sex, less competent, and

less committed than men.

- In business, employers somehow tend to discriminate employees because they will be

forced to provide mandatory:

 Family leave

 Eight weeks of paid maternity leave

 Unpaid leave for a new parent

 “Sick leave” for mothers whose children are sick

“If the Labor Code compels business to provide all accommodations for them, who would

want women employees?”

Stereotypes are assumptions made about a group of people and are applied to individuals,

irrespective of their personal characteristics, because of their affiliation with a certain

group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative or neutral. While both positive and negative

stereotypes can be harmful, they can occasionally serve as a learning experience. These stereotypes

may include some presumptions:

 There are fields of occupation, which are traditionally suitable for women because

of their “sensitive, vulnerable and fragile” nature.

 There are types of work, which may not be fitting to women due to their biological

condition like monthly period.

 The inability of women to cope up with certain job requirements since their

common gender personality and aptitude traits make them unsuitable for those jobs.
 Such generalization is based on our wrong perception about women. Minds should not be

caged on what the others cater to us or what we know because we may end up discriminating

women unknowingly.

Even we are not yet born and still in the womb of our mother, we already have the right to

live. We are created to live and have a life. The right to have a life comes with the right to work.

In order for us to live, we must work to earn income and to sustain our daily lives. Men and women

are created equal. If men have the right to work then women also do.

Everyone’s right to work should be upheld since this is essentially related to the right to

life and the support of his/her dependents.

What are ethical principles involved in job discrimination?

 Ethics is based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans

ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific

virtues.

 Business ethics is the study of proper business policies and practices regarding potentially
controversial issues such as corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination,

corporate social responsibility and fiduciary responsibilities.

Discrimination in the workplace is wrong and socially irresponsible because of the following

reasons:

1. Discrimination in hiring is disservice in the long run.

2. It is actually double jeopardy.

3. Most importantly, it is wrong to discriminate a group or an individual by reason of

ethics.
 4. When business discriminates, it consciously or unconsciously affirms that one

group is inferior or subordinate to another group.

Diversity in the workplace is a people issue, which focuses on the similarities and

differences between people in an organization. Diversity in the workplace is typically defined

largely to include different aspects beyond those legally specified in affirmative action non-

discrimination statutes and equal opportunity.

What is the best practice of Shell in terms of diversity standard?

Royal Dutch/Shell Group reports that Shell companies across the globe promotes a culture

in which all Shell employees, contractors and joint ventures share this commitment for diversity.

Shell Company must assure that it:

1. Has a systematic approach to diversity management addressing each other elements of

the Group Diversity Framework.

2. Actively supports attraction, development, retention and promotion of diverse talents.

3. Promotes a workplace free from harassment and discrimination;

4. Establishes annual diversity plans, goals, and targets for improvement: measures

appraises, and reports business performance.

5. Includes diversity performance in the appraisal and development plans of leaders and

employees.

6. Provides safe and effective way for employees to report observed behavioral

inconsistencies with this standard.