This week we are going to talk about one of the stalwarts of Employment Law. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This along with the Fair Labor Standards Act are the two main pillars of labor law in the United States. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevents discrimination on the basis of color, race, religion, sex and natural origin. Now there is one demographic that's missing and we will cover that one next week.
So of course, like most HR Laws, a lot of a lot of details a lot of vagueness in there. But basically what you need to know for this law. It shall be unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment. Because of an individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Or to limit, segregate or classify employees or applicants for employment in any way, which would tend to deprive an individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee. Because of the individuals' race color religion, sex, national origin. So you cannot hire or have any hiring practices or discharge practices or anything related to a candidate or employee's race, religion, color, second natural origin.
For example, you cannot say I'm not going to hire you because you're Hispanic or I'm going to promote you because you're female. Anything along those lines are illegal. Also, training programs are covered under this. As most of you know, the employees you put in training programs are the ones you want to get promoted. When you invest the time to put them into a training program that's showing them that you believe in them and you want them to get promoted. So same with training programs you cannot discriminate when you do training programs on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or natural origin.
For training programs, it shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer or labor organizations or labor-management committees. So these laws don't only cover employers. They also cover labor organizations and joint labor-management committees.
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on-the-job training programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training
So last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received across the United States 62,270 complaints regarding this. So be sure you're doing the right thing.
The next thing I want to talk about is disparate treatment and disparate impact. So disparate treatment is when you intentionally have a policy or process that discriminates against someone. For example, if your policy is at x, y, z company, we don't hire females. Or at x y company, we only hire Hispanic females. So that specific policy where you discriminate.
Disparate impact is when you have a policy and your intention might be good. But it unintentionally discriminates against someone else. For example, suppose you are in the Seattle area, and you have a policy that for your software developers, you are only going to hire software developers that graduate from the University of Washington.
The disparate impact might be all the people who apply for your positions are white males
Where you have qualified people from surrounding universities who are minority and female who didn't go to the University of Washington for whatever reason. They are at the other local colleges. Because of your policy, they cannot apply to your positions.
So you have all these white men apply for the jobs and no minorities or no females. So even though your intention might be good. You want to get high qualified candidates for a role from one the highest rankings computer science schools in the nation was all well and good, you want to have the best people.
But the disparate impact is that people who are qualified who are not white guys and who didn't go to the University of Washington not being able to apply. That is the disparate impact of that. So whenever you have a policy, always think through the second or third or affects.
So thanks for your time today. Any questions, remember, reach out to us at jasoncavness@cavnessHR.com.
I ask you to check out our cavnessHR podcast on most podcast platforms, where we talk to small business owners, founders and people who help them succeed. Also our co-founder Daniella Young will soon be launching her Hacking Culture podcast. Where she will be talking to business leaders about the importance of culture. Also, we ask you to sign up for our waitlist for cavnessHR platform.
Remember to be great every day.
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