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The recession is no excuse to discriminate
By Lauren | March 9, 2009
MSNBC reported today that, as the unemployment rate rises, discrimination complaints from laid off workers to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have risen by 15%. The folks complaining believe that they lost their jobs not because their companies needed to cut back, but because the recession provided a convenient excuse to get rid of minority, female, disabled and older workers. Some of those employees may just be nursing bruised egos or desperately seeking a nuisance settlement, but chances are that at least some of the complainants have a legitimate beef against their former employers.
If you’re one of those employers, it’s time to rethink your personnel practices.
To grossly oversimplify, the law prohibits discrimination against employees based on things about themselves they either can’t change (like their race, national origin, gender, age or physical disability), shouldn’t have to change (like their religion), or both. Employment laws are a lot more complex than that, of course, but laws prohibiting employment discrimination come down to the pretty simple idea that it’s unfair - in other words, unethical - to discriminate against people for the wrong reasons. Yes, you have every right to prefer your honest, hard-working, capable employees to the ones that send you home with a headache every night. But if you’re going to have favorites, you have to do it for lawful reasons.
These are scary times in the business world. It can be mighty tempting to make across-the-board cuts without thinking about the consequences or, even worse, to hunker down and take care of only the people who remind you most of yourself. Fight that temptation! If your company is in trouble and you have to let people go, make sure you take the labor laws into account. It’s not only what the law requires, it’s the ethical thing to do.
To read the MSNBC account, go to www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29554931/page/2/print.1/displaymode/1098/.
Topics: Business Ethics, corporate responsibility, ethics |
March 19th, 2009 at 1:10 am
[...] presents The recession is no excuse to discriminate posted at The Business Ethics Blog, saying, “Seems that if you’re an ethnic minority, [...]