Affirmative Action and Sexual Harassment

Employers face a responsibility to document the ethnic makeup of their workforces in order to decide whether affirmative action should be implemented in the hiring process. The path to accomplishing this effectively within the confines of the law, however, poses no easy task. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act makes explicit provisions outlining protected classes as individuals facing discrimination based on age, pregnancy, national origin, race, ethnic background, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation (Seller, 1964, p. 5). Minority groups in these protected classes deserve equal treatment, and employers carry the responsibility for such action.

When conducting an affirmative action program analysis, employers must be organized. They must consider a customized assessment of their "organizational structure, policies, practices, programs, and data" for each establishment they maintain (Perez, 2014, p. 1). This begins by first compiling an organizational table that shows a hierarchical tree displaying the "unit, job title, race, and gender" of the leadership in each division along with the race and gender of all the incumbents (Perez, 2014, p. 3). Each division or work department must be subjected to analysis based on job title, pay grade, and EE0-1 category in comparison with gender and nationality (Perez, 2014, p. 4–8). After analyzing job groups, a utilization analysis is required where employers analyze the percentage of minority incumbents in each job group and determine availability by adding weighted statistics along with the raw data (Perez, 2014, p. 11–12). The Department of Labor employs an 80% rule of thumb for establishing placement goals (Perez, 2014, p. 13). This process creates a legal way for deciding the need of affirmative action.

My real-life experience relating to affirmative actions consists only of dialogue with colleagues and teachers. It represents a defense of placing minority groups on equal footing with the white, male, and Christian majority and allows for equalization of achievement gaps.

Tangible employment action supports the cause of the employee in cases where discrimination occurred. Specifically, it refers to situations where work superiors manipulate the work environment circumstances surrounding employment such as benefits, assignments, promotions, and firing based on the performance of sexual favors based and undesirable advances (King, 2007, p. 1). The Ninth Circuit Court maintains that tangible employment action occurs in quid pro quo sexual harassment when a supervisor . . . succeeds in coercing an employee to engage in sexual acts by threats of discharge or other material job-related consequence, or fails in his efforts to coerce the employee but then actually discharges her on account of her refusal to submit to his demands (King, 2007, p. 1).

Although this certainly qualifies as sexual harassment, it remains distinct from a hostile environment where more pervasive forms of sexually degrading and crude language proliferate the workplace, often directed at a group or certain people in the open (Keating, 2011, p. 1). As such, the two categories are grouped separately.

At work, the presence of sexual harassment is not uncommon and remains easily discernible in hostile environments. I have a friend who worked for an employer where the management made no attempt to regulate dirty words and rude comments of a sexual nature. Co-workers, feeling empowered with implicit permission to act as they chose, would often respond to rude comments with their own comments. The resulting environment placed pressure on my friend, who felt no such compulsion to use sexual jokes, to fit in with the majority environment. The experience of my friend helped me understand that sexual harassment occurs in various degrees and can be perceived by those procuring it as an act in good humor. This form of social bullying, however, creates an environment where behavior can rapidly deteriorate.

References

Celler, E. (1964, July 2). Title VII of the civil rights act of 1964. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Retrieved from http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm

Keating, E. (2011, March 12). Tangible employment action and hostile work environment. Business & Legal Resources. Retrieved from http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Discrimination/ Sexual-Harassment/11zaa02-Tangible-Employment-Action-Hostile-Work-En#

King, G. H. (2007, January 1). 10.4B civil rights-title VII-"tangible employment action" defined. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Retrieved from http://www3.ce9. uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/179

Perez, T. E. (2014, January 1). Sample affirmative action program (AAP). U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/pdf/sampleaap.pdf