Equal Employment Opportunity

Equal employment opportunity is a legal concept that suggests that employers should practice nondiscrimination in their labor practices. This concept became codified into law by President Lyndon Johnson in the form of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” From this law, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established. Other laws that fall under the EEOC jurisdiction are the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which protects both men and women from sex-based wage discrimination; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which protects older individuals (40 or more years old) from hiring discrimination; Title I and Title V of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which protects qualified individuals with disabilities from employment discrimination by the private sector and state and local governments; Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which protects individuals with disabilities from employment discrimination by the federal government; and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which provides monetary compensation for intentional employment discrimination.

According to the EEOC, protections from discriminatory practices cover hiring and firing, recruitment, testing, fringe benefits, harassment, retaliation against individuals for filing claims of discriminatory practices, employment decisions based on stereotypes, and employment opportunities based on marriage to persons covered by the EEOC. Thus, the EEOC task has evolved from protecting individuals [Page 171]against discriminatory practices that were prevalent in employment to enforcing a host of civil rights laws that include affirmative action policies through which businesses were expected to actively seek out those who were historically shut out of hiring practices.

The evolution of equal employment to affirmative action was codified in 1972, when President Richard Nixon strengthened Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Johnson administration had assigned the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP) the duty to monitor affirmative action efforts of federal contractors. The Nixon administration expanded this task by requesting that organizations have an affirmative action plan to identify underrepresented groups, conduct an analysis of these “protected groups” in the area, and develop a timetable of how the organizations will meet their goals of diversifying their workforce. The OFCCP developed an eight-factor computation method that is seen as the federal definition of affirmative action. The eight factors are the percentage of protected group members (1) in the immediate area around the facility, (2) who are unemployed in the immediate area, (3) in the total workforce in the immediate area, (4) in the immediate area who have relevant work-related skills, (5) in a reasonable recruitment area who have relevant work-related skills, (6) working within the organization who can be promoted or transferred to the specific facility, (7) who are at institutions that provide training in the required work-related skills, and (8) at the specific facility who could be trained in the required work-related skills. This definition has been used by the OFCCP to evaluate a company's affirmative action plan, which can determine if the company should continue as a federal contractor.

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