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Employment Law and Policy

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Submitted By alicia19
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Pages 2
EEOC v. Consolidated Service System
Alicia Debayle
Ottawa University
Employment law and policies
Instructor: Carmen Pascaretti
March 26, 2013

1. Word of mouth can be seen as disparate treatment because employers can pass on potential employees. Recruiters have to make sure that they have a balanced workforce; in this case they do not, as they are mainly only hiring Koreans. Although many organizations make extensive use of word-of-mouth recruiting, the compliance manual notes that this technique in a non-diverse workforce is a barrier to equal employment opportunity if it does not create applicant pools that reflect the diversity in the qualified labor market. Thus, caution is needed when over-relying on word-of-mouth recruiting to ensure that it is not creating barriers towards hiring minorities. If they do not want to hire other nationalities other than Korean, then they will need to certify that they are hiring applicants based on the Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications, not race; otherwise this will be a basis for discrimination. They need to get approval from the EEOC for Bona fide occupational qualifications and show proof that the job requirements are correctly identified as validated Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications. 2. I believe that if it was a small company, my decision would remain the same in favour of word of mouth because sometimes companies really benefit from employee referrals. Word-of-mouth referrals often save small companies money on costly advertisements, require minimal effort, and can save them time. However, I do think that it discriminates against those not aware of the vacancy. I also think that keeping the workforce diverse is a really important factor as using the word of mouth recruiting may get a company full of people who have the same characteristics in terms of age, color, or religion. Therefore, it puts the company in danger of running afoul of Equal Employment Opportunity laws. When hiring employees, keeping diversity in mind is a very important undertaking. If a company (big or small) keeps diversity in mind, this can help them to avoid unintentional discrimination. 3. As I discussed above I don’t know in this case if it was intentional or not. However, I do understand the fact that giving opportunities to people that are from the same background and culture, can help them to understand each other in the company. Yet giving opportunities only to those people with similar personalities, beliefs, or cultural background, may hurt the company by passing on applicants who may have great skills and could bring new talent, and ideas to the company. As mentioned above, workplace diversity is really important for the growth of the company, and essential to avoid legal trouble.

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