Chapter 5: Achieving Equal Employment Opportunity

In a great variety of ways, government influences hiring and firing, pay and working conditions, training and retirement plans, relations with unions, and many other human resource practices of the private sector. Government responsibility for eliminating job discrimination in the U.S. rests primarily with two federal agencies: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC) in the Department of Labor.
The statutes governing antidiscrimination guidelines are numerous and complex. Individual or class action suits can be filed against a firm under any one or a combination of the following laws and directives:

• The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
• The Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1870, 1871, 1964, and 1991.
• The Equal Pay Act of 1963...
• The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
• The Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974.
• The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
• The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

The Agencies and Their Mandates. Title VII of the Civil Right act of 1964 prohibits job discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
The EEOC was established by Title VII to help carry out the 1964 law. The commission conducts its enforcement through the following procedure: People who believe they have been discriminated against file charges. Practitioners of EEOC litigation report that employers usually try to settle these cases out of court.
Guidance From Supreme Court Decisions. First of all, over discrimination is wrong and illegal. second, there is a continuing role for affirmative action because discrimination and its legacy in the workplace have not been fully eliminated
On balance, serious studies of the benefits and costs of equal emplyment opportunity programs and especially of affirmative action programs come down onthe positive side. Critics maintain that such interventions in the marketplace create divisive work-places and often harm the intended beneficiaries, aside from the general objection to government intervention in the private economy.

Source: Business and government in the global marketplace (seventh edition Murray L. Weidenbaum)