An overview of issues relating to racial discrimination in the workplace.
This paper deals with racial discrimination in the workplace, some of the legal statutes currently in place to address the phenomenon, and various forms of discrimination in corporations. The paper focuses on the main federal legal statute against these kinds of racial discrimination that is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and examines one of the best known recent cases involving corporate racial discrimination in Texaco, Inc.
“Starting in the 1960s, Congress passed a number of laws designed to eradicate discrimination and created “protected classes.” One of these protected classes defended individuals based on ethnicity. Yet almost four decades after the beginning of the civil rights movement, racial discrimination in the labor force remains a concern to both members of the public in general and workers in specific. 37.3 % of complaints filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1999 were race discrimination cases. (June 2001, US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) This discrimination can take many forms, yet amongst the most serious are failure to hire an individual based on their ethnicity, failure to promote an individual as quickly or at all, as a result of their ethnicity, and harassment and the creation of a hostile environment in the workplace. Instances of differentials in compensation based on race or employment termination due to race are also recorded.”