Labor Law: Equal Employment Opportunity

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Table of Contents

Civil Rights Act of 1964
Equal Employment Acts
Employee Rights and Issues
Recruiting Strategies
Employee Selection Methods
References

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Act is meant to protect the civil rights of minorities from any form of discrimination. After only three months of the Act’s enactment, the case Heart of Atlanta Motel Incorporated versus the United States was filed in the Supreme Court on October 5, 1964, challenging the law.

Heart of Atlanta Motel Incorporated, the complainant, insisted that it did not have an obligation to serve African American customers. The Supreme Court affirmed that failing to serve African American customers was tantamount to racial discrimination, which is a violation of Title II of the Act.

Equal Employment Acts

Equal Employment Acts have been challenged by the case St. Mary’s Honor CTR versus Hicks, filed in the Court of Appeals on April 20, 1993, and decided on June 25, 1993.

In the case, Hicks, who was demoted and eventually discharged from the company, alleged that he had been subjected to racial discrimination by its management personnel. The court held that Hicks’ rights were never violated and the actions of the company to demote and discharge him were not racially motivated.

Employee Rights and Issues

The issues and rights of employees were challenged in 2012 when the case Vance versus Ball State University was filed in the United States Supreme Court. The plaintiff claimed that he was in order, as the supervisor, to take disciplinary actions against defiant employees.

The Court held that, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, an employee only becomes a “supervisor” for reasons of vicarious liability if he is authorized by his employer to act that way.

Recruiting Strategies

Employee referral has both advantages and disadvantages when applied to recruit staff. The main advantages of the employee referral program are a simplification of the recruitment process and the possibility of hiring the most qualified candidates. However, employee referral is quite expensive, and it also compromises the diversity of potential candidates (Gitman & McDaniel, 2008). An employer can also rely on job fairs to recruit employees.

Hiring employees through live job fairs only requires an employer to attend such events to get suitable candidates; for this reason, it is a cheaper recruiting method. Online channels such as recruiting websites are also another effective recruiting method as they help to cut down the human resources expenses incurred during the process and yet, they still enhance the diversity of the potential candidates (Daft, 2008, p. 391).

An example of an employee recruitment process in the real-life situation is the way Price Waterhouse Coopers recruits its employees. The company normally recruits its employees online, through its websites. Whenever there is a vacancy in the company, it is posted on the firm’s websites, where qualified candidates are expected to apply.

Employee Selection Methods

The most useful employee selection methods are applications, employment tests, and medical or physical examinations. Each of the three selection methods has its reliability and validity. Applications help organizations to identify interested and suitable candidates to fill particular posts.

Employment tests enable the recruiting organization to ascertain the suitability of the candidates for a given job (Kumar, 2011). Employment tests are useful in the sense that they help an organization to establish the health condition and physical fitness of the candidates to be recruited. Consequently, an organization can only get the best chance of hiring the most performance-oriented employees by employing all three selection methods (Mathis & Jackson, 2012, p. 90).

An example of an excellent employee selection process is used in hiring staff at American Airways. The process begins with applications from interested candidates. The candidates are then subjected to tests to verify their suitability for the position. The candidates who pass the tests are then taken for medical checkups to ascertain their fitness.

References

Daft, R. L. (2008). New era of management. Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western.

Gitman, L. J., & McDaniel, C. D. (2008). The future of business: The essentials. Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western.

Kumar, R. (2011). Human resource management: Strategic analysis text and cases. New Delhi: I.K. International.

Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2012). Human resource management: Essential perspectives. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.

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