I was reading this article over at
Business Week about some things managers need to keep in mind when hiring or laying off staff. The first point the author makes really caught my eye as being somewhat interesting. The author notes that, according to law, if you fire an ethnic minority worker, for reasons entirely irrelevant of the background, you could still find yourself in legal trouble "disparate impact" issues. Specifically, firing an ethnic minority affects the statistical make-up of ethnicities in your company; therefore in certain situations this could be considered a form of discrimination.
The question I want to pose to you, oh faithful reader, is the following: is this indeed a form of discrimination? Or merely more American, over sensitive, P.C. nonsense? If a worker is incompetent at their job, and deserves to be fired, surely their ethnic background should not have anything to do with the decision. But wait, dig a little deeper. If the laying off of a singular ethnic minority worker affects the company’s ethnic make-up so deeply, does this imply a fundamental discriminatory policy towards hiring workers?
Food for thought; let's hear you sound off in the comments.
- Manuel
1 comment:
That's just too stupid to even merit giving more than 1 minute of my poor little brain's energy, so:
I think that companies should be in no way obliged to hire/fire people of any ethnic background in order to achieve some sort of mix.
In business the only colour that matters is... invisible - what ever colour your thoughts, and ability are - possibly the same colour as your brain.
This is a bunch of American nonsense, and it can go get pucked
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