A Question of Discrimination

One of the first problems Jennifer faced at her father's Carter Cleaning Centers concerned the inadequacies of the firm's current HR manage- ment practices and procedures.

One problem that particularly concerned her was the lack of attention to equal employment matters. Each store manager indepen- dently handled virtually all hiring; the managers had received no train- ing regarding such fundamental matters as the types of questions they should not ask of job applicants.

It was therefore not unusual for female applicants to be asked questions such as "Who's going to take care of your children while you are at work?" and for minority applicants to be

asked questions about arrest records and credit histories. Nonminority applicants-three store managers were white males and three were white females-were not asked these questions, as Jennifer discerned from her interviews with the managers.

Based on discussions with her father, Jennifer deduced two reasons for the laid-back attitude toward equal employment: (1) her father's lack of insight about the legal re- quirements and (2) the fact that, as Jack Carter put it, "Virtually all our workers are women or minority members anyway, so no one can come in here and accuse us of being discriminatory, can they?"

Jennifer decided to mull that question over, but before she could, she was faced with two serious equal rights problems. Two women in one store privately confided to her that their manager was making un- welcome sexual advances toward them. One claimed he had threatened to fire her unless she "socialized" with him after hours.

And during a fact-finding trip to another store, an older gentleman-he was 73 years old-complained of the fact that although he had almost 50 years of experience, he was paid less than people half his age in the same job. Jennifer's review of the stores resulted in the following questions.

Questions

Is it true, as Jack Carter claims, that "virtually all our workers are women or minority members anyway, so no one can come in here and accuse us of being discriminatory"?

How should Jennifer and her company address the sexual harassment charges and problems?

How should she and her company address the possible problems of age discrimination?

Given the fact that each of its stores has only a handful of em- ployees, is her company covered by equal rights legislation?

And finally, aside from the specific problems, what other personnel management matters (application forms, training, and so on) have to be reviewed given the need to bring them into compliance with equal rights laws?