Workplace Discrimination and Harassment

When you walk in the door to work every day, you see the familiar faces of people who share the same goal--to get along well and work together to make your company successful. At least, that's how it should be.

Discrimination and harassment can get in the way of achieving this goal.

• Discrimination can hold you back if you're judged unfairly and can keep you from reaching your full potential. How we treat each other at work is important. It not only can make the difference between having a good day and having a bad day, but also can determine whether we get our work done. So it's essential to treat each other fairly and without offense, and to do something if others fail to do so.
  • Everyone a company employs or considers for a job is protected from discrimination. The law protects individuals in virtually every aspect of employment, including interviews; application forms; preemployment testing and physical examinations; and the terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. This includes full- and part-time employees, probationary employees, job applicants, and sometimes even former employees. The law also covers noncitizens working in the United States and U.S. citizens working for U.S.-owned and U.S.-controlled companies in foreign countries
  • Narrow exceptions to these rules do exist. If a particular religion, sex, or national origin is essential to the performance of a job, then people without those characteristics can be excluded. This is called a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). The BFOQ must relate to the job, the employee's ability to do the job, and the essence of the business. For example, religion may qualify as a BFOQ when a church is hiring a priest. However, customer preferences usually don't justify gender as a BFOQ--unless it's a matter of privacy. Race and color can never be BFOQs.
    
    Other exceptions include voluntary affirmative action plans created by employers to help eliminate past or present barriers to equal employment opportunity. Also, employers can apply different standards of pay and benefits based on seniority, as long as the differences don't result from an intention to discriminate.
     
• Harassment can make your workplace so uncomfortable and unproductive that you won't even want to walk through that door.
  • Harassment is another matter altogether because it generally affects those we work with every day. Sometimes it's easy to spot. But, on other occasions, it can be hard to know what behavior is considered harassment.
  • Workplace harassment based on sex, race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, or disability is illegal. Some state and local laws also ban harassment based on characteristics such as sexual orientation, marital status, personal appearance, and political affiliation.
  • Harassment can occur when someone is subjected to unwelcome offensive conduct. Unwelcome conduct based on sex can be things like unwanted touching, pestering someone for dates, and telling sexual jokes or jokes that put people down on the basis of gender. It can also include talking about sex, displaying sexual images, and sending sexual e-mail in the workplace. Some examples of conduct that can constitute nonsexual harassment include using ethnic terms, telling jokes, and displaying symbols that could be offensive.
  • "This for that" and "hostile environment" harassment are both illegal. Unwelcome conduct becomes illegal if it leads to a negative employment decision such as the recipient being fired, demoted, or passed over for promotion. This is known as "this for that" harassment. It's also illegal if the conduct is so severe or frequent that it changes the employee's working conditions. This is called "hostile environment" harassment.
    
    There's no fixed standard for deciding what's severe or frequent. One especially bad incident can be considered severe. It depends on several factors, such as whether the conduct was physically threatening or humiliating, or whether it unreasonably interfered with the employee's ability to work. Coworkers' constant lewd talk might not be severe but could be considered pervasive, depending on the facts and circumstances--such as the nature of the talk and how often it occurs.
  • Anyone can be guilty of harassment. Whether conduct amounts to harassment doesn't depend on the relationship of the people involved. No employee is allowed to harass another. This means that a mailroom clerk, for example, could be guilty of harassing a supervisor, as well as vice versa. Nonemployee visitors to the workplace, such as delivery people, repair people, and consultants, can also be guilty of harassing employees.
  • You should keep the following key concepts in mind:
    • Workplace harassment based on sex, race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, and disability is illegal.
    • Unwelcome offensive conduct can be harassment.
    • Conduct is unwelcome when a person doesn't invite or agree to it and finds it offensive or undesirable.
    • "This for that" and "hostile environment" harassment are both illegal.
    • Anyone can be guilty of harassment.

  But discrimination and harassment aren't just unfair ways to treat people--they're illegal.

  Let's look at some examples that I've seen over the years, then I'll tell you about the related laws and how to handle these situations when they arise.
   

• are complex
• have many facets that must be considered
• are open to different interpretations

What is an ethical dilemma?

Certain thoughts, like "it's no big deal" or "I deserve this,"  " This is a part of the job" (entitilement) occur to people facing ethical dilemmas. These thoughts should act as warning signs--you have a better chance of recognizing ethical dilemmas when you tune in to them.

The ethics quick test

The test consists of four questions:
 

Where can you turn for input? Here are some resources:

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

Recommended Links

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: January 03, 2020