CHAPTER SEVEN
The Ethics of Job Discrimination
Overview
Introduction
The debates over equality, diversity, and discrimination have been prolonged and
acrimonious. Controversy continues to swirl around the nature of the plight of racial
minorities, the inequality of women, and the harm that whites or males have suffered as a
result of preference shown to women and minorities. These continuing debates over racial
and sexual diversity have often focused on business and its needs. This is inevitable: Racial
and sexual discrimination have had a long history in business, and diversity now promises
to have significant benefits for business.
This chapter begins by examining the nature and extent of discrimination. It then turns
to discussing the ethical aspects of discriminatory behavior in employment and ends
with a discussion of diversity and affirmative action programs in business.
7.1 Job Discrimination: Its Nature
Though more women and minorities are entering formerly white male-dominated jobs, they
still face discrimination. The experiment conducted by ABC shows that women and
minorities were systematically given less consideration in hiring: they received fewer job
offers and less desirable jobs than white males. Other research suggests that blacks and
Hispanics were offered jobs 50% fewer times than white males.
Discrimination in its root meaning is not at all wrong. It simply refers to the act of
distinguishing one object from another. However, in modern usage, the term refers to
“wrongful discrimination,” or distinguishing among people on the basis of prejudice instead of
individual merit.
Discrimination in employment involves three basic elements:
1. It must be a decision not based on individual merit.
2. The decision must derive from racial or sexual prejudice, false stereotypes, or some
other kind of morally unjustified attitude against members of the class to which the
employee belongs.
3. The decision must have a harmful impact on the interest of employees against whom
the decision is made in hiring, compensation, promotion, job assignments, or
termination of those employees.
Discriminatory acts themselves can be categorized according to the extent to which they are
intentional and institutionalized.
1. An act may be part of the isolated behavior of a single individual who intentionally
discriminates based on personal prejudice.
2. An act may be part of the routine, institutionalized behavior of a group that
discriminates because of the shared prejudices of its members.
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3. An act may be part of the isolated behavior of a single individual who unintentionally
discriminates because he or she uncritically adopts the practices and stereotypes of
his or her society.
4. A discriminatory act may be the result of the institutionalized routines of a corporate
organization whose procedures and practices unintentionally discriminate against
women or minorities.
Whereas in the early 1960s employment discrimination was generally seen an intentional
act performed one individual on another. By the 1970s, the term discrimination was being
used regularly to include disparities of minority representation within the ranks of a firm
regardless of whether the disparity had been intentionally created. An organization was
“discriminatory” when minority group representation within its ranks was significantly
disproportional to the group’s local availability. A group would be guilty of discrimination if
minority group representation were not proportionate to the minority group’s local
availability.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 gave federal government increased power
to combat this form of discrimination and to even require affirmative action programs to
correct any deficiencies.
Subsequently, people came to criticize this view. They argued that discrimination was the
act of individuals, and that individual minorities and women were its victims. The problem
with this criticism is that it is often difficult to know whether a specific individual, was
discriminated against. The only way of telling whether a process is fair or discriminatory is
to see what happens to minorities as a group. American society has gone back and forth on
this issue ever since. Many even believe that though businesses in the U.S. used to be
discriminatory, they are no longer so.
7.2 Discrimination: Its Extent
An indication of discrimination exists when a disproportionate number of a certain group’s
members hold less desirable positions despite their preferences and abilities. We can make
three types of comparisons to provide evidence of this type:
1. Average Income Comparisons – comparisons of average benefits given to
minorities and women, compared to other groups,
2. Lowest Income Comparisons – comparisons of the proportion of a minorities and
women found in the lowest levels of the institution compared to the proportions of
other groups found at those levels,
3. Desirable Occupation Comparisons – comparisons of the proportion of a
minorities and women found in the most advantageous positions in the institution as
compared to the proportions of other groups in those positions. When we make these
three comparisons, it seems clear that some form of discrimination is still present in
the U.S., though for some groups it is not as intense as it used to be.
Income comparisons are the most suggestive indicators of discrimination. The income gap
between whites and blacks, counter to what many think, has not decreased (black average
family income remains about 64% that of whites in 2008). There are similar inequalities
found based on gender as well. Though the ratio between male and female earnings is
getting more equal, this is largely due not to a rise in female earnings but to a drop in, male
earnings. In 2008, after 10 years after graduation, the average women’s earnings shows
women earned only 70% of average earnings for every dollar of average earnings of men.
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Disparities begin immediately after college graduation; in fact, female graduates earn about
as much as male high school graduates. In every occupational group, women earn less than
men. Blacks fare a bit better than females, but not much.
For most other blacks, however, the picture remains grim. Lowest income group
comparisons and desirable occupation comparisons give similar results. Statistically, larger
proportions of minorities and women are poor, and larger proportions of white males have
the most desirable occupations. In fact, the more women who work in an occupation, the
lower the average pay for that job. Though perhaps some of the disparities between white
males and women or minorities can be accounted for by the preferences of the latter (who
voluntarily choose to work in the lower paying jobs), the disparities are so large that it
cannot entirely be accounted for in this way.
The difficulties for minorities seem to be getting worse. Though they will soon be a majority
of the labor force, studies indicate that many of the new jobs that will be created will
require education beyond high school, and most minorities are falling behind in their
educational attainment.
Finding that our economic institutions generally seem to embody discrimination, as this
section proves, it does not in itself prove that any particular business is discriminatory,
however.
The large influx of women and minorities has encountered major difficulties in the job
market.
1. Cultural stenotype, prejudice and conscious and unconscious biases steer a sizable
proportion of women into traditionally “women” jobs that pay less than traditionally
“male jobs.”
2. When women advance in their careers, they encounter barriers like the glass
ceiling.
3. Married women who want children, unlike married men who want children, currently
encounter major difficulties in their career advancement.
Whether we compare average incomes, representation in the highest economic positions or,
or representation in the lowest economic positions, it turns out that women and minorities
do not yet have opportunities equal to those of white males.
7.3 Discrimination: Utility, Rights, and Justice
Given the inequalities found in U.S. businesses, we must address the issue of whether these
inequalities are wrong and, if they are, how they should be changed. Arguments against
discrimination fall into three groups: utilitarian arguments, rights arguments, and justice
arguments. The utilitarian argument against discrimination maintains that society’s
productivity will be highest when jobs are awarded based on competence or merit.
Discrimination based on anything else is inefficient and, therefore, counter to utility.
Utilitarian arguments have been attacked on two fronts. First, if jobs should be assigned on
the basis of job-related qualifications only so long as such assignments will advance the
public welfare, then if public welfare would be advanced to a greater degree by assigning
jobs on the basis of some factor not related to job performance, then the utilitarian would
have to hold that in those situations jobs should not be assigned on the basis of job related
qualifications, but on the basis of that other factor. Second, it might be true that society as
a whole would benefit by having some group discriminated against.
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Other, non-utilitarian arguments against discrimination maintain that it is wrong because it
violates people’s basic human rights. Kant, for example, says that humans should be
treated as ends in themselves and never as a means to an end. Therefore, discrimination is
wrong because it violates people’s rights to be treated as equals. In addition, some Kantian
thinkers argue that discrimination is wrong because the person who discriminates would not
want to see his or her behavior universalized (at least they would not want to change places
with the victim of their own discrimination).
A third group of arguments against discrimination views it as unjust. Rawls argues that it is
unjust arbitrarily to give some people more opportunity than others. Another related
argument sees it as a form of injustice because individuals who are equal in all relevant
respects cannot be treated differently just because they differ in other, non-relevant
respects. The problem with this argument is that it is difficult to define precisely what
counts as relevant and to explain why sex and race are not relevant, but intelligence is.
Despite the difficulties with these arguments against discrimination, there are five widely
recognized categories of discriminatory practices:
1. Recruitment practices that rely on the word-of-mouth referrals of present employees
will tend to recruit only from the groups already represented.
2. Screening practices that include qualifications not relevant to a job (such as requiring
a certain level of education for very low-level jobs).
3. Promotion practices that place groups on separate tracks or that rely solely on
seniority when past discrimination has kept women or minorities out of senior
positions.
4. Conditions of employment that do not award equal wages and salaries to people
doing essentially the same work.
5. Discharging an employee based on race or gender, or layoff policies that rely solely
on seniority.
Women are victims of a different and troublesome type of discrimination: sexual
harassment. Generally, the guidelines against sexual harassment are clearly morally
justified. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published a set of
guidelines defining harassment and what was prohibited by law. Unwelcome sexual
advances when:
1. Submission to such conduct is made explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an
individual’s employment.
2. Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for
employment decisions affecting such individual.
3. Such conduct has the purpose of effect of unreasonably interfering with an
individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive
working environment.
However, there are some aspects of the guidelines that must be examined.
First, in addition to prohibiting harassing acts, they also prohibit more than just particular
acts of harassment; they prohibit creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working
environment.
This raises some difficult questions. Are mechanics who hang pin-up calendars guilty of
sexual harassment? Though most people now say yes, there are a number of critics who say
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that these kinds of environments were not intended to degrade women, and besides,
women have the power to take care of themselves.
Secondly, the guidelines say that verbal or physical contact is harassment if it has the effect
of unreasonably interfering with the victim’s work performance. This means, claim some
critics, that sexual harassment depends on the purely subjective judgments of the victim;
what is unreasonable to one person may seem perfectly acceptable to another.
A more serious objection to such guidelines is that they violate people’s right to free speech.
However, though these objections may be valid on college campuses, they are not at all
relevant to businesses, where free discussion and examination of ideas are not the focus.
A third feature of the guidelines goes on to say that a firm can be guilty of sexual
harassment even if it did not know and could not have known that the harassment was
going on–indeed, even if the firm had expressly forbidden the offensive act. Supporters of
the guidelines point out that the harms caused by sexual harassment should be considered
a cost of doing business, which it is proper to internalize.
Groups other than women and racial minorities can be the victims of discrimination. The
disabled, victims of AIDS, homosexuals, and the overweight are all discriminated against.
Currently, there are no federal laws prohibiting discrimination against many of these
groups.
7.4 Affirmative Action
So far, the policies discussed in this chapter are all negative, aimed at preventing further
discrimination. Affirmative action programs, in contrast, call for positive steps designed to
eliminate the effects of past discrimination. Such programs are now legally required of all
firms holding government contracts.
Affirmative action programs begin with a detailed study, a “utilization analysis” of the major
job classifications in an organization. The analysis is designed to discover whether there are
fewer minorities or women in a particular job classification than could reasonably be
expected. If the analysis shows that women or minorities are underutilized, then the firm
must establish practices to correct these deficiencies.
The U.S. Supreme Court has not been clear about the legality of affirmative action
programs. Rulings suggest significant vacillation on the issue. The main grounds for
attacking them is that, in attempting to correct the effects of past injustice, affirmative
action may actually be racially or sexually discriminatory itself.
In the face of this objection, supporters of affirmative action make two main
counterarguments. One of these is to interpret affirmative action as a form of compensation
for past injuries. The other interprets preferential treatment as an instrument for achieving
social goals. The former arguments are backward looking, focusing on the wrongness of the
past; the latter are forward looking, instrumentalist arguments focusing on what the future
ought to be.
There are those who argue that affirmative action is a form of compensation argument to
maintain that white males must pay reparations for unjustly injuring others by
discrimination in the past. The difficulty with such arguments is that the principle of
compensatory justice requires that compensation should come only from those specific
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individuals who intentionally inflicted a wrong, and should be paid only to those specific
individuals who suffered that wrong. It does not require that compensation should come
from all members of a group containing some wrongdoers, nor that compensation should go
to all members of a group containing some injured parties. Many have attempted to counter
this argument by claiming that every minority living today has been injured by
discrimination and that every white male has benefited from those injuries. Whether these
arguments are successful or not is unclear.
The second way of justifying affirmative action is as an instrument for increasing
utility. This argument furthers it as an instrument for social change, promoting public
welfare. Based on the statistics such as those at the beginning of this chapter, such
arguments maintain that race and gender provide an indicator of need. Since reducing this
need is consistent with utilitarian principles (as it will increase total utility), affirmative
action is justified.
Objections made to this argument question whether the social costs of affirmative action
outweigh their benefits. However, even more elaborate and convincing arguments for
affirmative action are made. They argue that the goal of affirmative action is social justice,
and that affirmative action is a morally legitimate means for achieving this goal.
Presently, women and minorities do not have the equal opportunity that justice demands,
statistics prove this. First, they argue that the end envisioned by affirmative action programs
is equal justice. Secondly, the affirmative actions are morally legitimate means of achieving
this end. The basic end, therefore, is a more just society, and preferential treatment is a
morally legitimate means to attain this end.
However, three reasons have been advanced to show that affirmative action is not, in fact,
morally legitimate. First, it is claimed that affirmative action discriminates against white
males. However, given the definition of discrimination, because the preferential treatment is
not based on contempt of white males, it cannot be said to be the same thing as
discrimination against minorities or women.
Second, some claim that preferential treatment violates the principle of equality because it
takes into consideration race, which is an irrelevant characteristic. Defenders of affirmative
action counter by saying that sexual and racial differences are actually relevant
characteristics.
Third, critics claim that affirmative action actually harms women and minorities by implying
that they are so inferior to white males that they need special help to succeed. This claim is
countered by saying that, though affirmative action undoubtedly has some costs, the
benefits of such programs outweigh them. Moreover, they point out that affirmative action
is not based on an assumption of white male superiority but on recognition of bias in favor
of white males. Finally, they point out that though some minorities may feel inferior because
of affirmative action, many more are made to feel inferior because of racism–and besides,
showing preference towards them does not make them feel inferior.
The success or failure of an affirmative action program also depends in part on the
accommodations a company makes to the special needs of a racially and sexually diverse
workforce. Both women and minorities encounter special workplace problems. The
arguments on both sides are powerful, and the debate continues.
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Because of concerns raised by opponents of affirmative action, guidelines have been
suggested to ensure that it’s more harmful effects will be lessened. Of course, the problems
encountered by minorities differ markedly from those encountered by women. Recently,
some proposals that are more radical than affirmative action have been made to deal with
sexual discrimination. Since the jobs women have historically taken pay low wages and
salaries, proponents of comparable worth programs attempt not to place women into
higher paying jobs, but to increase the salaries of those jobs where women currently are
employed.
In a comparable worth program, each job in a firm is assigned a certain number of points
for difficulty, skill requirements, experience, and other factors. Then, jobs are assumed to
deserve equal pay if they score similarly. The fundamental argument in favor of
comparative worth is the principle of justice. Opponents counter that the market is the most
appropriate determining factor of wages. If the market pays a certain job a low salary, they
claim, it is because there is a large supply of workers in that category.
In the near future, only a small proportion of new workers will be white males. Because of
this demographic trend, firms’ enlightened self-interest will prompt them to give women and
minorities special consideration. If they do not accommodate themselves to these workers,
they may not be able to find the workers they need to compete in the world market.
Although there continue to be arguments against the affirmative action programs, there are
reasons to retain them. Most new workers will be women and minorities, so in order to
accommodate this change in demographics, the enlightened self-interest should prompt
business to give women and minorities a special hand. The costs of not assisting the
coming influx of women and minorities with their special needs will not be borne entirely by
the women and minorities. If the U.S. businesses do not accommodate these workers,
businesses will not be able to find the workers that they need. To respond to this, many
companies have undertaken programs to prepare themselves now to respond to the special
needs of women. Other companies have instituted aggressive affirmative action programs
to integrate large groups of minorities into their firms to satisfy the need for qualified
employees.
Extra Resources
1. “In the Land of Jim Crow” (2008) is a 5-part series that looks at the experience of
living in a segregated society and of the struggle for civil rights.
2. “Black. White.” (2006) is a 273 minute 6-part series documentary that looks at a
white family and a black family made up as the opposite race.
3. “Black in America,” (2008) a CNN documentary that explores the experience and
condition of black men and women today; “500 Years Later” (2009) looks at the
struggles of black people around the world.
4. “Wal-Mart Ruling to Have Wide Reach”(June 21, 2011) An on-line Wall Street
Journal article by Jess Bravin and Ann Zimmerman available from
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070104576399673899870098.
htm
Questions for Class Discussion
1. What are the three basic elements of discrimination in employment? Why is each
element necessary to the definition?
2. What is the distinction between institutionalized and isolated discrimination? Can
discrimination be unintentional as well as intentional?
3. What types of comparisons can be drawn to prove that discrimination exists?
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4. Can the large disparities between white males and women or minorities be accounted
for by the preferences of women and minorities? What other reasons might there be
for the disparities?
5. Why, according to the utilitarian view, is discrimination in the workplace unethical?
6. How do rights theorists argue against discrimination? What are the justice-based
arguments against it?
7. What kinds of employment practices are clearly discriminatory?
8. If sexual harassment is illegal and clearly immoral, how can the guidelines against
sexual harassment be controversial? What aspects do some find problematic?
9. What are the two types of arguments used to justify affirmative action? What are the
strengths and weaknesses of both attempts?
10. Does preferential treatment violate the principle of equality? Why or why not?
11. What are comparable worth programs? How are they justified? What objections do
critics raise against them?
Activities and Assignments
1. Velasquez notes, “Although future new jobs will require steeply increasing levels of
skills and education, minorities are falling behind in their educational attainment“.
Have students’ debate whether or not the fact of their falling behind is itself a form
of institutionalized discrimination, and just what businesses should do in the face of
this fact.
2. Break students randomly into small groups and ask them to explore the feasibility
and desirability of expanding discriminatory legislation to groups that are currently
beyond the scope of society’s attention: the obese, transvestites, and gays. After
they come to general agreement on a position, have each group report to the class
and discuss the results (and each group’s reasoning).
3. Engage students in an investigation of their own college (or in a segment of their
institution) as though they were preparing to implement a comparable worth
program. Have them decide which jobs would have to have their salaries changed,
and then discuss whether the institution would benefit from the program.
4. Ask students to put themselves in the place of the human resources department of a
large U.S. corporation. Given Velasquez’ statement that “in view of future
demographic trends enlightened self-interest should also prompt business to give
women and minorities a special hand,” assign them the task of coming up with an
action plan to ensure the continued business success of their firm.
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