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Recession Intensifies Need for Diversity and Compliance Training
Deanna Hartley, 02-23-2009
The recent economic downturn has ensured monetary cutbacks are a mantra for almost any organization. However, it is advisable for companies not to take cost-cutting measures to an extreme by eliminating essential training designed to yield long-term benefits.
As the unemployment rate continues to rise at record rates — 7.6 percent in January 2009, according to the United States Department of Labor — so do the number of discrimination claims.
Research has shown every 1.5 percent increase in the unemployment rate leads to an approximate 21 percent increase in discrimination claims, explained Shanti Atkins, president and CEO of Ethics and Legal Compliance Training (ELT).
“When you see the unemployment rate going up at the rate it is, employers can just expect almost on a mathematical basis to see a precipitous rise in discrimination lawsuits,” Atkins said.
“People sue and bring claims when they feel they’ve been treated badly and when their alternatives are scarce,” she explained. “Obviously, in a bad economy when there are fewer jobs, the likelihood of you becoming a litigant is much higher because you don’t have a better-paying job to go to.”
Cutting diversity and compliance training programs could seem like a financially sound step, but it could prove detrimental to the organization in the long term.
In fact, the number of discrimination charges in the private sector rose by 15.2 percent from fiscal year 2007 to 2008, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Lawsuits filed targeted legislation from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Equal Pay Act of 1964.
Atkins said federal guidelines, state laws and the current political climate point to the need for employers to be more selective where they decide to cut back on expenses. “[The] Obama administration has been very vocal about vowing stricter enforcements of discrimination laws,” Atkins said.
For instance, in January, the president signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. The law essentially reverses a U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited the time frame an employee had to bring a pay-discrimination lawsuit.
“Under the old law, an employee could only bring pay discrimination lawsuits within six months of the discrimination beginning,” Atkins explained.
But under the new law, if a woman notices that she gets paid less than her male counterparts, she can bring a lawsuit for the pay discrepancy for up to six months after receiving any of her allegedly discriminatory paychecks. This substantially increases liability from the employer’s perspective.
Another law Atkins said is likely on President Obama’s agenda is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
“The thrust of it [was] to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Title VII federally protective categories,” Atkins explained. However, as of last year, the gender-identity portion was removed to increase the possibility of passing it into law.
“If [sexual orientation] gets added into federal law, that’s going to be a big sweeping change for a lot of employers,” Atkins said. “[When] this law passes, [there will be] major changes to policies, benefits, training, etc.”
Disability Pay Gap Widens in U.K.
People with disabilities who work in government jobs earn almost a third less than their able-bodied counterparts, according to a recent article in The Independent, a United Kingdom-based publication.
The situation likely is worse in the private sector, said Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, a series of affiliated unions that represent nearly 7 million working people in Britain.
The disparity in annual salaries between individuals with disabilities working in the Home Office — a government department in the U.K. — and their able-bodied colleagues was in excess of 10,000 pounds, according to the Civil Service employment survey.
While some figures have estimated the average hourly wage of people with disabilities at approximately 10 percent less than their colleagues’, others point to a wage discrepancy of almost 26 percent.
A spokesperson for the U.K. Cabinet Office issued a statement that said the salaries of civil servants — or civilian public-sector employees — were based on how they performed on the job and not on their physical condition. He explained that the number of civil servants with disabilities has more than doubled since the turn of the century.
Some say while substantial efforts — such as the introduction of the Equality Bill — are directed toward fixing the gender pay gap, the wage inequality of people with disabilities often is overlooked.
“Employers who put barriers up that prevent disabled people from progressing in their careers are missing out on wasted talent,” Barber told The Independent.
