Issues in Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action

Abstract

Here we have an opportunity to use previous exercises and still build for use in future exercises (XVIII). After completing the section on testing (Exercise IX) you should be familiar with acceptable employee selection procedures which permit the selection of the best person to do a specific job. However, because of inappropriate testing procedures in the past there is another aspect of selecting people which must be addressed--job discrimination. Basically what is defined as job discrimination is any “adverse impact” that an organization’s selection procedures may have on “protected groups”--minorities and women. Further, congress has decided that not only must the past practices causing adverse impact be eliminated but that organizations must engage in proactive practices to remedy past discrimination. The latter are commonly called affirmative action programs. These two issues, job discrimination and affirmative action, are the focus of this exercise.