Sex Discrimination Case Study

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Background Facts The Transportation Agency, Santa Clara, California recognized sexual disparity within their workforce, and constructed a well-designed voluntary affirmative action program, specifically created to remedy this problem. Afterwards, the company promoted Diane Joyce to the position of road dispatcher over a similarly qualified candidate, Paul Johnson. As part of their affirmative action plan, the agency took the sex of both applicants into consideration when making the decision to promote Ms. Joyce. Mr. Johnson filed a discrimination charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging that he was the victim of discrimination on the basis of sex, and was denied a promotion accordingly. At issue was, did …show more content…
The consenting justices noted multiple factors relevant to the defendant’s position that women were not fairly represented commensurate to the area labor market, as well as the Agency’s desire to voluntarily conform to the “objectives of the law”(Bennett-Alexander, p.255), which I believe helped to sway the opinion of the court. Some of the factors taken into consideration by the court included:
• The imbalance of minority representation in the job classification at issue
• The long term goal of a workforce representative of minorities in the labor force
• There was no quota system or deadline for the inclusion of minorities and women
• The plan merely authorized a candidate’s sex as a consideration, not a defining factor for promotion
• The agency directed its supervisors to take a “host of practical factors” in meeting affirmative action
…show more content…
In the case of Johnson v. Transportation Agency, the courts stance on the plan for implementation of affirmative action in hiring and promotions makes perfect sense, however it was not what I had expected to see. In implementing its affirmative action program, the court noted that the Agency had done its due diligence in creating a plan specifically designed to creale workforce balance while not compromising and particular group’s rights under the law, as well as the integrity and quality of its existing workforce. The plan presented by the agency was both comprehensive and thoughtful, regarding the needs of all parties concerned including the company, its majority and minority work groups. Until now, my impression of affirmative action plans was that they were basically quota systems under which lesser qualified candidates would be promoted or hired. My impressions led me to believe that most companies weighed a person’s sex, race, color etc., significantly more heavily, when attempting to implement workforce balance than they actually appear to do. I also thought that this practice would result in someone who was not equally qualified, being hired over some who was obviously a better fit for a particular position, simply because of their minority

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