It is rare today to find overt discrimination from most employers. This is not to suggest that discrimination has disappeared. Some of the most difficult discrimination is the disparate treatment that occurs from unconscious discrimination.
An employer may believe they are properly complying with all aspects of federal and New York state antidiscrimination programs, but some discriminatory conduct is so deeply rooted as to not appear to be discrimination at all.
Older workers may encounter such discrimination when looking for work at a tech company, where the hiring staff may only be in their 30s and implicitly presume anyone in their 50s could not possibly be “with it” on social media or mobile technology.
Some jobs still carry vestiges of discrimination against women, with men in human resource positions who unconsciously believe other men make better police officers or electricians.
But most employers have the assistance of employment law attorneys who vet all of their employment materials, from advertisements to applications and employment policy statements. While they may still engage in discriminatory acts, they are typically much too clever to explicitly enunciate discriminatory statements.
But not all.
A healthcare company posted an advertisement for female nurses in New York that, with a straight face, stated in the advertisement “No Haitians.” You would like to respond that “needless to say, this is improper,” but clearly, it does need to be said, as this is a clear violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition of both national origin and race discrimination.
You would think that the healthcare company or the newspaper that published the advertisement would have noticed the illegal statement, but perhaps it is as much a sign that some employers and some publishers do not bother with any legal review of job postings, in yet another example of “the race to the bottom” in an effort to save money.
Source: newyork.cbelocal.com, “Healthcare Co. Under Fire For ‘No Haitians’ Help Wanted Ad,” October 18, 2015
