All Articles Tagged "workplace discrimination"
‘Love & Hip Hop’ Argument Spurs Discussion of Discrimination in the Workplace
via Vh1
Those who tuned in to Love & Hip Hop this week may have caught an intense discussion between Jen Bayer and Raqi Thunda that culminated in a few statements that have led to backlash.
After getting the brush off from Raqi — “Have fun trying to get hot” — Raqi said, “I’m white honey. It will get done.” Both women continued, throwing around racially-charged language.
With that in mind, Black Enterprise takes a closer look at workplace discrimination and what you should do if you think you’re a victim of it.
“Experts recommend keeping a diary of events,” the article says. “Document any incidents of racism that happen to you in the workplace or that you witness.”
For more tips and advice on how to deal with this situation, click through to BlackEnterprise.com.
Diversity in the Workplace: How To Handle Employment Discrimination
Image: iStockphoto
Experts say it’s because the job market is so tight. That’s why the number of cases of job discrimination is up. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency responsible for investigating employment discrimination charges, the number of complaints from workers and job seekers hit an all-time high last year.
During the 2001 fiscal year, nearly 100,000 charges from citizens were made, “the most logged in a single year in the agency’s 46-year history,” reported The Huffington Post. “The agency also managed to obtain a historic amount of monetary relief for alleged victims of job discrimination — $365 million, the most on record.”
So what to do if you find that you have been discriminated against because of your race, age, sex, sexual orientation? We asked workplace diversity expert Janet Crenshaw Smith, president of the Ivy Planning Group. LLC. “Contrary to popular belief, discrimination is alive and well in 2012. However, today discrimination and bias is much more likely to show up in subtle ways versus overt ways,” she says.
- Alert the higher-ups at your company: “The corporate leaders that I work with are intolerant of discrimination. They want to know if it is happening in their companies. So I do believe that employees should make their companies aware when they are experiencing it,” Smith says. “The test of whether you should leave a company is how the company reacts when you raise the issue. The company should be fair to all parties involved, and it also should not retaliate against you for raising the issue.”
- Help change your firm’s corporate culture. “You can help to change the corporate culture at your job by speaking up, and speaking for diversity and inclusion. You start by showing the value of diversity and inclusion,” she explains. “You can demonstrate the value of difference by sharing your diverse network – in terms of employee referrals and customers. You can open the eyes of your colleagues by letting them know the subtle ways they exclude – little things, micro-triggers – they probably don’t even know what they don’t know. Speak up. It helps you, your team and the culture.”
- Make the complain official. If you have complained to the heads of your company or potential employer and the issue has not been addressed, file a complaint with the EEOC.
Female Restaurant Workers Struggle Against Bias, Lack of Pay
A new study may make you think twice the next time you think about stiffing the waitress because she didn’t refill your water fast enough. Restaurant Opportunities Centers United or ROC United, released the study, “Tipped Over the Edge” on Capitol Hill to highlight gender bias in the restaurant industry. The report found that women face “systematic discrimination, poverty wages, a lack of sick days, and five times more harassment than the general female workforce.”
According to the report, restaurant lobbyists have successfully kept the federal minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers at $2.13 an hour for the past 20 years. This means that the low wage has disproportionately affected women restaurant workers.
Women comprise 52 percent of all restaurant workers, and 66 percent of tipped employees. Men tend to get hired for higher-paying positions such as chefs, even though traditionally women are perceived to do the cooking in the home. In addition, women servers generally work at lower-paying restaurants as opposed to fine dining establishments where they stand to earn better tips. This means that a majority of women in the same position as men end up making only 68 percent of what male servers make in a year. Women restaurant employees also face unpredictable work schedules. This affects their ability to find reliable child care as they are unsure of when they will be available.
Now this last statistic will make you think twice on a lot more than doubling your tips: a whopping 90 percent of restaurant workers report that they do not receive employee paid sick days or health benefits. Unable to afford taking off from work, two-thirds of them report that they are forced to work and prepare or serve food while sick.
Feds Sue TX Company Where Workers Hung Nooses
(San Antonio Express) — The federal government has sued two San Antonio companies, accusing one of racial discrimination and the other of age discrimination. Since at least January, African American employees at AA Foundries Inc. routinely experienced a racially hostile work environment that included the display of a “hangman’s noose,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged in a lawsuit filed Friday. A superintendent also is alleged to have frequently used the “N” word when addressing black workers. A company lawyer said it will fight the lawsuit.
City to Pay $30 Million, Hire 111 Black Firefighters
(Chicago Sun Times) — Chicago will hire 111 bypassed black firefighters by March 2012 and pay at least $30 million in damages to some 6,000 others who will never get that chance, under a court order expected to be approved Wednesday by a federal judge. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed that African-American candidates did not wait too long before filing a lawsuit that accused the city of discriminating against them for the way it handled a 1995 firefighter’s entrance exam. A federal appeals court affirmed that ruling in May and remanded the case back to the trial court to implement a hiring remedy the city had been stalling.
25% of Blacks Feel Discriminated Against at Work
(BET) — Twenty-five percent of African-Americans reported feeling discriminated against in their current job, according to a new CareerBuilder survey of diverse workers that found continued inequalities in pay, career advancement and feelings of bias. CareerBuilder questioned more than 1,300 workers from six diverse backgrounds, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women, workers with disabilities and lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) workers for the Diversity in the Workplace survey. The study focused on larger economies and workforces, targeting the top 20 markets in the U.S. by population. The information was gathered between February 21 and March 10, 2011.
Black Journalists Trade White Newsrooms for Black
(Columbia Journalism Review) — It started as a trickle. Sylvester Monroe resigned in 2006 as Sunday national editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and, two months later, joined the staff of Ebonymagazine. In 2008 the renowned byline of Jack E. White, the first black columnist at Time magazine, began to regularly appear on The Root, where Lynette Clemetson, formerly ofThe New York Times and Newsweek, was managing editor. By March of this year when Constance C. R. White, once an influential New York Times fashion writer, was named editor in chief of Essence, the trickle had swelled into a river of prominent African-American journalists streaming to black-oriented media. The names of veterans like Lynette Holloway and E. R. Shipp, formerly of The New York Times; Teresa Wiltz, Natalie Hopkinson, and Michael Cottman, all of The Washington Post; Joel Dreyfuss, formerly of Fortune and PC Magazine, and Amy DuBois Barnett ofHarper’s Bazaar and Teen People, are turning up in places like Ebony, Jet, and Essence; at BlackAmericaWeb.com, a division of Reach Media, Inc.; and at The Root, the online site spearheaded by Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. and published by The Washington Post Company. Some of these moves were prompted by layoffs and buyouts; others by disillusionment with mainstream journalism or a desire to delve more deeply into African-American issues. Whatever the reasons, with increasing frequency, African-American journalists are reversing the once common trajectory from the black press to the mainstream. New ventures like HuffPost Global Black, a vertical for Arianna Huffington’s widely read website that will be launched in partnership with Sheila Johnson, cofounder of Black Entertainment Television, are likely to quicken the pace.
Chicago Ordered to Hire 111 Black Firefighters
(Chicago Sun Times) — The Chicago Fire Department must hire 111 bypassed black firefighter candidates — and distribute “tens of millions of dollars” in damages to 6,000 others who will never get that chance — a federal appeals court ruled Friday, upholding a landmark ruling. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 9-to-0 decision, that, contrary to the city’s contention, African-American candidates hadn’t waited too long before filing a lawsuit that accused the city of discriminating against them for the way it handled a 1995 firefighter’s entrance exam. On Friday, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling and sent the case back to the trial court to implement what it called the “hiring remedy” the city has been stalling. Plaintiffs’ attorney Joshua Karsh said the decision means Chicago must hire 111 African-American firefighters and adjust their pensions as if they had been on the job since 1995. Six-thousand others will share “tens of millions of dollars” in damages, Karsh said.
How Black Men Got Squeezed Out of Boardrooms
(BNET) – A new report from the nonprofit group Catalyststates that “Collectively, women and minorities lost ground in America’s corporate boardrooms between 2004 and 2010.” Based on Catalyst’s research, that’s true enough: White men accounted for 72.9 percent of the members of Fortune 100 boards in 2010-slightly more than 2004, when they accounted for 71.2 percent. But lumping “women and minorities” together masks the real problem. It’s true that women haven’t gained much ground since 2004–just one lousy percentage point. And Catalyst, as an organization dedicated to women’s advancement in corporate America, is most concerned with women’s representation. But in terms of board representation, what the Catalyst research really shows is a disaster for African-American men.
Missouri’s Black Lawmakers Fight Job-Based Discrimination Bill
(St. Louis American) — The Missouri Legislative Black Caucus urged the Gov. Jay Nixon Wednesday to veto a workplace discrimination bill, which came to his desk on April 18. Senate bill 188 would take the state backwards in terms of civil rights, caucus members said, by making discrimination cases more difficult to file for women, seniors, minorities and people with disabilities or illnesses. On April 13, the state Senate passed the bill, which modifies certain provisions of the Missouri Human Rights Act regarding employment. A coalition of women’s organizations, the state- and national-level National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, trial attorneys, advocacy groups for the disabled and labor unions have joined together to push Nixon to veto the bill. Nixon has 14 days to decide.
