Employers Must Avoid Discriminatory Hiring Practices
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- Published on Tuesday, 31 January 2012 21:53
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment. In terms of hiring, employers must ensure that they are not excluding a particular class of protected individuals in violation of Title VII, such as all women. In a recent case, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges that Mavis Discount Tire refused to hire women for a wide variety of positions even though some of the applicants had superior qualifications. The Millwood, New York-based company, which also operates as Mavis Tire Supply Corporation and Mavis Tire NY, sells tires and a variety of other automotive parts and services. The case involves the Mavis job positions of tire installers, mechanics, assistant managers, managers, and related positions. The EEOC alleges that since at least 2008, only one woman was employed in any of these positions out of approximately 800 employees. The EEOC also alleges that out of approximately 1,300 hires that Mavis made between 2008-2010 for the above listed positions, not one was female. Additionally, even though Mavis allegedly failed to properly maintain applications—which is itself a separate violation of federal law—the applications that were available indicated that Mavis rejected women with superior credentials and experience, and less qualified men were hired.
Anna M. Pohl, EEOC trial attorney, commented that “Women have been working in traditionally all-male fields like automotive services and sales for quite a while, but Mavis seems to be stuck in the past.”
For employers concerned about possible discriminatory hiring practices in their workplace, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has created a Guide for Small Businesses with Federal Contracts, which contains helpful information even for those employers who are not dealing with federal contracts. Specifically, the OFCCP created a self-audit for employers to take in order to assess their hiring practices in the workplace, to ensure that discrimination is not occurring. On the issue of discriminatory hiring practices, the self-audit asks: (1) Were there women and minority applicants? (2) What were their qualifications? (3) How did their qualifications compare to the qualifications of the people who were hired? (4) Why did the decision-makers select those hired and not the women and minority applicants who seemed to have comparable qualifications? (5) Were all the qualifications necessary for successful performance of the job? Employers would be wise to keep this checklist as a guide when hiring and to take the self-audit created by the OFCCP to help ensure that they are not engaging in discriminatory workplace practices. For more information on the self-audit, click here.