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Nature of Labor Discrimination

The term of discrimination comes from Latin discernere which means to distinguish,
sort, or separate (Bertens, 2000: 186). Discrimination is "distinguishing one object from
another object". In this sense discrimination is an act that is morally neutral and cannot be
blamed. Discrimination occurs in all sectors of people's lives, including business. For
example, racial and sexual discrimination has long existed in business history. Even
though many minorities and women are currently entering the workforce, various
problems of discrimination still surround workers.
Discriminating labor means making a decision that is detrimental to employees who
are members of a particular group because of the prejudice that is morally not justified
against the group. Many employees are treated differently without relevant reasons. In
this case, discrimination involves three basic elements:
a. Decisions that harm employees, because they are not based on their abilities.
b. Decisions that are detrimental to employees because they are based on prejudices
(for example, racial, sexual, and religious) are wrong stereotypes, or other
attitudes that are morally untrue to members of a particular group where the
employee originates.
c. Decisions that have a negative influence or detrimental to the interests of
employees which can result in them losing their jobs.
Two forms of discriminatory actions that occur in the company :
1. Deliberately
Discrimination is done intentionally and consciously because:
a. Individual personal behavior that exists within the organization and is not an
organization that is desired by the organization. For example, a company does not
intend to discriminate, but the interviewer appointed at the time of deliberate and
conscious recruitment discriminates because of personal prejudice.
b. The organization's routine (hereditary) routine practices discriminate because of the
personal prejudices of its members so that the practice eventually institutionalizes.
For example, a company from now until now only accepts men as security
personnel, because women are not suitable as security personnel. This action finally
institutionalized and carried out continuously.
2. Accidentally
An organization may never intend to discriminate, but accidentally and
unconsciously did so because:
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 a. Accept traditional stereotypical practices from the surrounding community. For
example, in a community environment there is an assumption that women do not
deserve to be leaders, so women rarely occupy important positions or positions.
b. Carry out formal company procedures. For example, a company must follow the
procedures set out in conducting recruitment. But the procedure turned out to
cause certain groups to be discriminated against.
c. Accidental. For example, the majority of workers who are employed in a company
are mostly men, because they happen to be applying for jobs and successfully
meet the graduation standards of most men.

2. Levels of Discrimination
According to Velasques (2000: 373) by looking at statistical indicators about the
distribution of group members in the organization concerned it can be estimated about the
occurrence of discrimination in certain groups within an organization. Indicator that
discrimination has occurred if there is an unbalanced proportion of certain group
members who hold positions that are less desirable in an institution without considering
their preferences or abilities. There are three comparisons that can prove such
distributions:
a. Comparison of the average profit given by the institution to a group that is
discriminated against with the average benefit given to another group.
b. Comparison of the proportion of discriminated groups in the same level
c. Comparison of the proportion of group members who hold more profitable positions
with the proportion of other groups in the same position.

3. Dicrimination: Utilities, Rights, and Justice

The root meaning of the term discriminate is “to distinguish one object from an
other,” a morally neutral and not necessarily wrongful activity. However, in modern
usage, the term is not morally neutral; it is usually intended to refer to the wrongful act of
distinguishing illicitly among people not on the basis of individual merit, but on the basis
of prejudice or some other invidious or morally reprehensible attitude. This morally
charged notion of invidious discrimination, as it applies to employment. In this sense, to
discriminate in employment is to make an adverse decision (or set of decisions) against
employees (or prospective employees) who belong to a certain class because of morally
unjustified prejudice toward members of that class. Thus, discrimination in employment
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must involve three basic elements. First, it is a decision against one or more employees
(or prospective employees) that is not based on individual merit, such as the ability to
perform a given job, seniority, or other morally legistimate qualifications. Second, the
decision derives solely or in part from racial or sexual prejudice, false stereotypes, or
some other kind of morally injustified attitude against members of the class to which the
employee belongs. Third, the decision (or set of decisions) has a harmful or negative
impact on the interest of the employees, perhaps costing them jobs, promotions, or better
pay.
The arguments mustered against discrimination generally fall into three groups: (a)
utilitarian arguments, which claim that discrimination leads to an inefficient use of human
resources; (b) rights arguments, which claim that discrimination violates basic human
rights, and (c) justice arguments, which claim that discrimination results in an unjust
distribution of society’s benefits and burdens.
1. Utility
The standard utilitarian argument against racial and sexual discrimination is based
on the idea that a society’s productivity will be optimized to the extent that jobs are
awarded on the basis of competency (or “merit”). Different jobs, the argument goes,
require different skills and personality traits if they are to be carried out in as
productive a manner as possible.
Utilitarian arguments of this sort, however, have encountered two kind of
objections. First, if the argument is correct, then jobs should be assigned on the
basis of job related qualifications only so long as such assignments will advance the
public welfare. Second, the utilitarian argument must also answer the charge of
opponents who hold that society as a whole may benefit from some forms of sexual
discrimination.
2. Rights
Kantian Theory, for example, holds that human beings should be treated as ends
and never used merely as means. At a minimum, the principle means that each
individual has a moral right to be treated as a free person equal to any other person
and that all individuals have a correlative moral duty to treat each individual as a
free and equal person. Discriminatory practices violate the principle in two ways.
Fist, discrimination is based on the belief that one group is inferior to other groups.
Second, discrimination places the members of groups that are discriminated against
in lower social and economic positions: women and minorities have fewer job
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 opportunities and are given lower salaries. Again, the right to be treated as a free
and equal person is violated.
3. Justice
John Rawls argued that among the principles of justice that the enlightened parties
to the “Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are attached
to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
Discrimination violates this principle by arbitrarily closing off to minorities the
more desirable offices and positions in an institution, thereby not giving them an
opportunity equal to that og others. Arbitrarily giving some individuals less of an
opportunity to compete for jobs than others is unjust.
Disciminatory Practices
Among the practices now widely recognized as discriminatory are the following:
1. Recruitment Practices.
Firms that rely solely on the word-of-mouth referrals of present employees to
recruit new workers tend to recruit only from those racial and sexual groups that are
already represented in their labor force.
2. Screening Practices.
Job qualifications are discriminatory when they are not relevant to the job to be
performed.
3. Promotion Practices.
Promotion, job progression, and transfer practices are discriminatory when
employees place White males on job tracks separate from those open to women and
minorities.
4. Conditions of Employment.
Wages and salaries are discriminatory to the extent that equal wages and salaries
are not given to people who are doing essentially the same work.
5. Discharge.
Firing an employee on the basis of race or sex is a clear from of discrimination

4. Affirmative action
As a result of past discriminatory practices, minorities and women today do not have
skills comparable to those of the majority and men. In Indonesia, which consists of many
ethnicities, has different cultures and levels of progress. This will lead to unintentional

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discrimination. Likewise, stereotypical practices of discrimination against women have
resulted in many Indonesian women currently unable to occupy important positions.
Various efforts must be made to overcome the effects of injustice in the past. So as to
eliminate the effects of past discrimination many companies carry out affirmative action,
namely actions intended to achieve a representative distribution within the company by
giving preference to women and minorities. The essence of this affirmative action is a
detailed investigation (utility analysis) of all major occupational classifications in the
company to determine whether the number of female and minority employees in certain
occupational classifications is smaller than the level of labor availability in the area where
workers are recruited.
Affirmative action was criticized on the grounds that efforts to correct past
discrimination losses were precisely by doing discrimination in reverse discrimination,
namely by giving preference to women and minorities. This irrelevant preference is
considered to violate justice, because it does not heed the principle of equality of rights
and opportunities. Whatever discrimination is in its shape is still an unfair act, because it
is discrimination.
On the other hand there are a number of arguments in favor of affirmative action namely
that:
1. Affirmative action as compensation
Confident justice implies that a person is obliged to compensate people who have
been harmed intentionally. The weakness of the argument that supports affirmative
action based on compensation principles is that this principle suggests compensation
only from disadvantaged individuals.
2. Affirmative action as an instrument to achieve social goals
Idea support is given on the basis that these programs are morally a legitimate
instrument for achieving morally legitimate goals. The purpose of affirmative action
program actions:
a. Distributing community benefits and burdens that are consistent with the
principles of distributive justice
b. To neutralize the bias so as to guarantee equal rights to obtain opportunities for
women and minorities.
c. To neutralize competitive weaknesses currently held by women and minorities as
they compete.

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 While the basic purpose of the affirmative action program is the creation of a more
equitable society, where the opportunities possessed by a person are not limited by
race or gender.
3. Application of affirmative action and handling diversity
Proponents of the affirmative action program state that criteria other than race and
gender need to be considered when making decisions in affirmative action programs.
Until now the controversy regarding the moral feasibility of the affirmative action
program has not ended.

5. Case Analysis of Bank Jawa Timur (East Java)

a. Background Case
On Thursday (03/20/2014), Bank Jatim gives an announcement for prospective
employees who want to apply for jobs as secretaries (SK) with female criteria not
allowed to wear a hijab. The announcement was contained in the brochures of Bank
Jatim in Airlangga Career Fair XXII Scholarship and Entrepreneur Expo held by
Airlangga University (Unair). The committee tried to contact the Director of Bank
Jatim at that time HadiSukrianto to confirm the related provisions, but his cellular
telephone was not active.
Head of Division (Kabid) for Handling Cases of Surabaya Legal Aid Institution
(Hosnan) said, the case of the ban on women wearing hijab registering as prospective
employees is a matter of human rights. Bank Jatim can be prosecuted, for
discriminating against Indonesian citizens. Hosnan claimed, his party would conduct a
study of the information, if it really happened then this problem could enter the sara
issue. This problem can be big, if Bank Jatim does not confirm and apologize for the
action.
The Governor of East Java, Soekarwo did not agree with the discriminatory rules
issued by the Regional Government Banks in this case Bank Jatim. Soekarwo ordered
the Director of Bank Jatim to apologize to the public for the issuance of the rule. On
the reprimand, Director of Bank Jatim, HadiSukrianto, when successfully confirmed,
admitted that he had been reprimanded directly by Governor Soekarwo regarding the
mistake of the employee acceptance brochure. It promised to impose sanctions on
staff who made the discriminatory brochure and said that Bank Jatim had never
banned hijab employees, because so far as many as 50 percent of Bank Jatim

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 employees had used hijab, even Bank Jatim often gave guidance to employees how to
dress well in work.

b. Ethical Issues
In this case, Bank Jatim clearly discriminated against women with hijab. The
practice of discrimination is carried out in the process of employee recruitment. If you
look at it from a utility point of view, it is clear that this practice is a discriminatory
act of employment no longer solely based on ability but appearance, and this has
disadvantaged some people, namely women who use hijab. From a rights perspective,
this practice certainly violates the rights of women who are hijab to get the same job.
Whereas according to the view of justice, this practice is clearly a violation of
discrimination by not giving equal opportunities to women who are hijab and not
wearing hijab in obtaining employment.

c. Conclusion
Although Bank Jatim has admitted its mistakes, information on discrimination that
has spread widely to the public certainly has a negative impression on the world of
work. The preference action taken by the Governor of East Java we feel is very true as
an affirmative effort to achieve certain social goals, in this case providing equal
opportunities to the community in terms of obtaining employment.

There are still many discriminatory practices that occur in the world of work, this still
requires serious attention from all circles so that practices that have violated humanitarian
norms can be minimized or even eliminated.

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 Reference

Dewi, Sutrisna. 2010. Etika Bisnis Konsep Dasar Implementasi & Kasus. Denpasar: Udayana
University Press.