All Articles Tagged "job discrimination"
Is It 2013 Or 1913? African American Nurse Sues Michigan Hospital After Being Banned From Caring For A Caucasian Newborn
Source: Shutterstock
It’s quite ironic that as our country celebrates Black History Month, we have some Americans who are still walking around as if Jim Crow laws are still being enforced. An African American nurse by the name of Tonya Battle is suing Hurley Medical Center in Michigan after the hospital banned her from taking care of a Caucasian newborn that was being kept in their intensive care unit, reports the Huffington Post.
According to the legal complaint acquired by WNEM TV 5, the father of the infant flashed Battle’s supervisor “a swastika of some kind” and requested that no Black personnel be included in the care of his baby. The supervisor is said to have agreed to and granted the request made by the newborn’s father and informed Battle that she was being removed from the chid’s case. Court documents also reveal that Battle’s supervisor placed a note on the infant’s file that read:
“No African American nurse to take care of baby.”
While reports suggest that the hospital’s attorneys eventually rejected and overturned the supervisor’s decision, the barring of Black nurses from taking care of the newborn was said to have been carried out for about a month. Battle is now suing the hospital for emotional stress, in addition to the damage that the lawsuit has done to her reputation as a medical professional.
She is said to have also filed a complaint with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
One would think that something as minuscule as skin color would be irrelevant when it comes to the health of a sick newborn, but apparently some are still caught up in a web of ignorance. It’s difficult to even imagine how humiliating this entire experience has been for Tonya Battle.
What do you think of the hospital’s decision to honor the father’s request of keeping African American staff members from caring for his baby?
Jazmine Denise is a news writer for Madame Noire. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise.
How Prioritizing Family Can Jeopardize Your Job
(AOL) — While there’s no specific law covering discrimination against employees due to family responsibilities, there are laws that may protect you if your employer is big enough.
1. Sick/disabled family members: If an immediate family member (or you) has a medical condition that requires regular doctor’s appointments, you may well be entitled to up to 12 weeks a year of unpaid leave. This leave can be intermittent, which means that you get up to about 60 days a year or 480 hours. (That’s a whole lot of doctor’s appointments.) This applies only if you need to miss work for a serious medical condition of a family member, AND your employer has at least 50 employees, AND you’ve been there at least a year. If you know you will need this type of leave, make sure that you notify HR in advance so you make sure you’re covered. If you think you qualify and they claim you don’t, then contact an employment lawyer in your state to discuss your rights.
Brush with Justice System Keep Many from Jobs
(The Grio) — Today, it is estimated that 65 million U.S. adults have a criminal record and continue to face barriers to employment as a result. According to a new report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the overuse of imposing criminal background checks and blanket bans against hiring people who have been charged with even a misdemeanor offense is a practice that has been adopted by at least 10 leading national employers, including Bank of America, Aramark, Lowe’s, Domino’s Pizza and Radio Shack, among others. In 1987, the EEOC issued policy guidelines that determined barring people from employed based solely on a criminal conviction history disproportionately excluded African-Americans and Latinos from the labor market because they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Just as it is illegal to overtly discriminate by race, ethnicity or skin color, it is also a violation of civil rights law for an employer to use non-job related selection criteria that disproportionately disadvantages people of color in hiring decisions.
Unemployed Need Not Apply Here
By Charlotte Young
For the millions of unemployed people tired of receiving a steady stream of job rejection letters, the problem may not necessarily be their skill set so much as it is their status. According to Colorlines, human resource departments have admitted that they look for applicants who are already employed—a discrimination practice with no current law in place to protect those it bars from job security.
To address this issue, House Democrats Jesse Jackson Jr. and Hank Johnson are taking a stand on job discrimination practices against the unemployed by introducing the Fair Employment Act of 2011. This act would amend the Civil Rights Act and prevent discrimination based on current employment status.
Johnson voices his reasons for the new proposed act, declaring that “discrimination against the unemployed smacks of days gone by when signs read, ‘women need not apply,’ ‘Irish need not apply’ or ‘no Blacks allowed.’ I’m going to do all I can to fight for the unemployed,” he said.
It’s a fact that the longer a person has been unemployed, the harder it becomes to find a job. Statistics from the Department of Labor reveal that after about five weeks of unemployment, persons are re-employed at about 3.1 percent, which drops to 8.7 percent after one year. More than six million people have been out of work for at least six years, Colorlines reports, but black Americans currently account for the highest percentage of unemployment at over 15 percent. Although a report from the Economic Policy Institute reports that 2.8 million new jobs were created in January, there were 13.9 million unemployed.
It’s safe to say that for many Americans, especially African-Americans, the proposed Fair Employment Act of 2011 could do a lot of good.
Charges of Bias at Work Hit Record
(Wall Street JOurnal) — Private-sector workers filed a record number of discrimination charges against employers during fiscal 2010, an increase business groups and attorneys attributed primarily to the strained economy. The number of charges filed with the EEOC rose to nearly 100,000, up 7% from the year-earlier period and 21% from fiscal 2007. ”When times are good, people are happy and when they’re not, they aren’t,” said Joe Trauger, vice president of human-resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, a business trade group. “Anytime we go into a recession or the economy gets a little shaky the numbers seem to spike a bit,” he said.
