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CHAPTER 3 Understanding Equal Opportunity and the Legal Environment

CHALLENGES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to deal more effectively with the following challenges:

1 Recognize why understanding the legal environment is important.
2 Become aware of conflicting strategies for fair employment.
3 Gain mastery of the equal employment opportunity laws.
4 Understand EEO enforcement and compliance.
5 Have familiarity with other important laws.
6 Ensure avoiding pitfalls in EEO.

Discrimination claims are always difficult for companies, so it is important to stay current with trends in the legal environment. An emerging trend involves claims of employment discrimination based on an employee’s appearance. Being aware of the legal standards that are used in such cases can help you prevent a company’s employees from taking their discrimination claims to court. The following are some examples of cases related to personal appearance:

Source: © Hero Images Inc./Alamy.

▪ While many people wear tattoos as a form of personal expression, some companies are not tolerant of visible tattoos in the workplace. Walmart has a standard dress code policy in its stores that requires employees with tattoos to keep them concealed. At Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, an employee was fired for violating a dress code prohibiting visible tattoos on his wrists. However, the tattoos contained religious symbols and the company agreed to pay the discharged employee $150,000 in an out-of-court settlement.1
▪ In California, a female employee refused to wear makeup as required by her employer. The employee alleged that the employer was engaging in gender stereotyping by requiring female beverage servers to wear makeup. Although the employee was unable to provide enough evidence to prevail in this case, in other legal jurisdictions, such as Madison, Wisconsin, city laws forbid discrimination based on physical appearance.
▪ Debrahlee Lorenzana was fired from her job as a banker at a Citibank branch in New York City because her appearance was too distracting to the men around her, who could not concentrate on their work. Ms. Lorenzana’s bosses ordered her to wear modest clothing, and she was forbidden to wear turtleneck sweaters, three-inch heels, or fitted business suits. Ms. Lorenzana claimed that her female colleagues wore far more revealing clothing than she did, and she refused to let her bosses dictate what clothes she could wear to work. She sued the company based on the discriminatory treatment she is alleged to have received. Ultimately the case never went to court and the plaintiff decided to drop the lawsuit.

Employers can avoid legal entanglements by developing employment policies and practices that avoid the discriminatory treatment of employees. For example, appearance policies should not place an undue burden on one gender and not on the other. In addition, appearance requirements should be applied to employees only when they are necessary to achieve a specific business purpose. If the employers who forced their employees to wear makeup or hide religious symbols had instead considered how to minimize their exposure to employment discrimination, they could have avoided having to defend their employment practices in court.2

The Managerial Perspective

Managers must understand the legal issues that affect the practice of HRM because many of their decisions are constrained to some extent by law. They should consider legal issues when making the following decisions:

▪ Which employees to hire
▪ How to compensate employees
▪ What benefits to offer
▪ How to accommodate employees with dependents
▪ How and when to fire employees

Legal constraints on HR practices have become increasingly more complex, in large part because of new employment laws and recent court decisions that interpret existing laws. The new employment laws mainly affect people with disabilities and those who seek a medical leave of absence from work. The court decisions relate to numerous issues such as worker safety and sexual harassment. Changes in the law have made HR decisions more difficult and risky—thereby increasing the cost of poor decisions.

HR managers consult and advise managers about the legal aspects of a personnel decision. Legal concerns are not the only priority in employment decisions, but they are heavily considered along with other factors such as timeliness, product quality, and economic efficiency. The dynamism of the legal environment means that managers must seek the advice of HR specialists who, in turn, add value to management decisions with their expertise in employment laws and regulations.

In this chapter, we examine the various aspects of HR law and regulation. First, we look at why managers must understand the HR legal environment. Next we explore several challenges that managers face when they try to comply with the law. Then we discuss equal employment opportunity (EEO) law, the enforcement mechanisms in place to ensure compliance, and several other laws that affect HRM. Finally, we describe ways for the effective manager to avoid potential legal pitfalls.

We need to start with a caveat. As with any legal issue you face, you should seek the advice of a qualified attorney to grapple with specific legal questions or problems relating to HRM. Many lawyers specialize in labor and employment law. However, you should not feel that you cannot make any decisions without specific legal counsel, and it is a mistake to let legal considerations become so important that you end up making poor business decisions. One goal of this chapter is to give you enough information to know when you need to seek legal counsel.

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Table of Contents for CHAPTER 3 Understanding Equal Opportunity and the Legal Environment

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Table of Contents for
CHAPTER 3 Understanding Equal Opportunity and the Legal Environment