EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION

                             EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION

      “HUMAN RESOURCES ARE CHALLENGED AS LAWSUITS CONTINUE.”

“A Company always suffers in an employment related lawsuit. In 2010, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) statistics reveal the highest number of employment discrimination charges in its 45 year history. A slow economy and increased budget on enforcement are the consequences of discrimination.” Revenge is the most frequently cited form. Race and gender are the most cited forms followed by retaliation. The rising expense on the company related to law suits and enforcements are highly expensive on companies. An issue can be resolved by providing substantial claim, however, other costs can take a roll on an employer as well. A company’s objective can sink under the stress of a lawsuit and can even damage its reputation in the competitive world. And if in case, a person or the company is found guilty, attorney fees can cost as much or more than settlement costs.

• Don’t you wish to know more about these cases?
• Why these companies need to pay settlement costs?
• How these high profiled companies have lowered their reputation by discrimination?

In today’s world, employment discrimination is on its verge. Employees are treated unequally based on their Religion, Race, Caste, Sex, Skin color, Body shape, Nationality, Disability, Age and many more. A business environment should not assume the person’s ability and talent based on race, gender, caste, disability etc. Not only on these factors, discrimination in workplace is divided into two broad categories:

Direct Discrimination:  This type of discrimination occurs on the grounds of basic personality traits.

Sex, orientation and gender discrimination:

Sex discrimination includes the inequality at work places among men and women. Women are treated unfairly because of their body shape, skin color, height and even pregnancy. Sometimes they too have to suffer sexual harassment while working in a high profile job.

Disabilities:

People are not selected because of their long term physical, mental impairment. These include cancer, AIDS, Polio, Diabetes, and a lot more serious illness.

Race and Religion:

Workplace discrimination on race includes nationality, ethnic origin and color. Religion is considered among philosophical and non-spiritual belief, including lack of belief.

Indirect Discrimination:

Indirect gender discrimination is more subtle than direct discrimination. This does not include a deliberate attempt to discriminate, however, have a prime effect on unfavourable means of disqualifying female job candidates. For instance, minimum height, dress sense, weight issues, these do not affect the job performance, but that set the bar too high for most women.

Discrimination complaints can be particularly very costly to a confined and non-reputed business, which is not always equipped with the legal resources to deal with such issues. Defending a formal charge of discrimination involves a significant amount of time, expense and attorney fees and can damage the company’s finance, affecting your ability to recruit talent in the near future.

Some of the recent incidents occurred in a high profiled and reputed countries includes:

·         Employed adults in the U.S. Have experienced or witnessed discrimination (61%) more than those in the UK (55%), France (43%) and Germany (37%).

·         42% of employed adults in the U.S. have experienced or witnessed racism in the workplace; the highest percentage of the four countries surveyed.

 “Women at Microsoft say it’s a toxic place to work”

                                      The most valuable company in the US has a problem that won’t go away.

The TECH company who investigates discrimination and harassment against females came to know last week about an email from an internal company email chain which was leaked to the news site QUARTZ.

It all started on March 20, when a woman at the company sent an email asking female colleagues for career advice. After six years doing the same job, she said, she didn’t see any opportunities to advance, according to Quartz, which reviewed the emails. Dozens of women replied to the email to share their own complaints about repeated discrimination and harassment — complaints they said the company’s human resources department had ignored.

“One woman said a co-worker had twice asked her to sit in his lap at a meeting, and a human resources manager in the room did nothing. One of the most alarming complaints came from a woman who said a contractor threatened to kill her on a business trip if she didn’t perform a sexual act on him.

When she told her boss, she said he brushed it off and described it as “flirting.” When she went to human resources, she said a manager told her there was nothing the company could do about it. Women also complained about getting passed over for promotions and being assigned secretarial work.

By the time Microsoft’s human resources director responded to the email thread on March 29, the list of complaints was 90 pages long. Kathleen Hogan, head of HR for the company, told the group in an email that she would personally investigate each of their claims and that she had notified the company’s executives, according to Quartz.

“We are appalled and sad to hear about these experiences. It is very painful to hear these stories and to know that anyone is facing such behavior at Microsoft. We must do better,” Hogan wrote in the email thread, according to a company spokesperson. Hogan said Microsoft will organize sessions to hear more about their concerns and to develop a plan to address them. “While reading some of this is very disheartening, I am proud and encouraged to see people empowered to speak up, say this is not right, and stand together for change.””

In this male dominated world, women are unable to express their feelings and emotions. The news is also leaked under a certain phenomenon of terror from the male candidates of MICROSOFT. This email is a proof similar to the testimonies presented in the court which will make really hard for the MICROSOFT to deny from.

Women are afraid to work in Microsoft and they consider a risk to their mental and physical well-being. “A former cyber security engineer at Microsoft, Katherine Moussouris, filed the lawsuit in 2019, alleging that managers repeatedly passed her over for promotions in favour of less qualified men. She said bias against women was widespread — that women were often interrupted and excluded from important meetings and that their judgment was “much more likely to be called into question than men’s,” according to court records.”

Another female engineers and an IT employee who work at Microsoft later joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs too. Another nine current and former employees shared similar complaints, according to court records.

A large number of people ignored this serious issue and considered the male candidates to be true, honest and declared the women the culprits. It is getting hard for the women to stay silent. So in order to raise their voice, they have filed lawsuits at TWITTER, GOOGLE, ORACLE, LINKED-IN Etc.

Even after these lawsuits many more women had to suffer from discrimination and sexual harassment because no proper actions were taken. Plethora of witnesses and testimonies have been showed up in courts, however, the progress is literally slow. Female Microsoft employees filed 118 internal complaints about gender discrimination between 2013 and 2018, according to documents made public in March 2019 as part of the court case. The company only considered one of them to have any merit.

“This thread has pulled the scab off a festering wound. The collective anger and frustration is palpable,” one Microsoft employee in the email chain wrote, according to Quartz. “A wide audience is now listening. And you know what? I’m good with that.”

While its really horrible to see that a majority of candidates especially women have been suffering from witnessed discrimination at work, More action, More awareness and women empowerment are the key features to end discrimination in the workplace.

The results of this survey should be a wake-up call for workers and employers to foster a more inclusive culture to end any form of discrimination at work.”

                                                     THANK YOU SO MUCH.

 Regards:

 Lakshay Jindal.