Alaska Employment Law

The US Equal Employment Opportunity (EEOC) Chair, Naomi C. Earp, who was appointed by President Bush and assumed the role of Chair in 2006, was in Anchorage on June 18, 2007, and spoke about two EEOC Initiatives:  E-RACE and Youth@Work.

According to the EEOC website, the “E-RACE” Initiative [“Eradicating Racism and Colorism in Employment”] is “an effort to identify and implement new strategies that will strengthen …[the] enforcement of Title VII and advance the statutory right to a workplace free of race and color discrimination…” Ms. Earp began the afternoon program at the Loussac Library asking the question, “Why is the Commission focusing on race discrimination in 2007?” Her answer was that although progress has been made since the passage of Title VII, race discrimination in the workplace is more subtle now than it was in 1964. In 1963, ads would say “No blacks” or “No women,” but now, the EEOC has found that employers use “proxies” for race such as zip codes, credit scores and personality tests. For example, employers may screen out prospective employees by looking at the zip codes and using assumptions about the race, ethnicity or socio-economic class or persons who typically live in that zip code area.

Using credit scores as a criterion in the hiring process may also demonstrate that employers have a racial or ethnic bias since, statistically, blacks, natives and Hispanics tend to have lower credit scores. An employer may have a business necessity to look at an employee’s credit score, for example, if the person is the credit manager for a company. But in general, a credit score has nothing to do with how the person can perform the job. Employers who give personality or other tests must be certain the tests are appropriate for the job and do not have a disparate impact on certain protected classes. The Chair referred to the EEOC’s Uniform Employee Selection Guidelines at 29 CFR 1607.

She stated that these regulations require that when an employer uses an examination during the selection process, it must ensure that the test is validated and measures some specific skill related to the job. Chair Earp encouraged employers to stop using subjective tests and to use objective tests that are normed for the job. She discussed other “proxies” for race and color discrimination including “image” hiring and arrest and conviction records. For more information about the E-RACE Initiative, see the Initiative’s website.

At the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce’s “Make It Monday” forum, Chair Earp discussed the EEOC’s Youth@Work Initiative. The Initiative is a public relations campaign that encourages young people to learn about their rights and, the Chair emphasized, their responsibilities in the workplace. The Chair indicated that although today’s young people seem very sophisticated, the EEOC had discovered that young people do not always talk to adults about work. In addition, young people today have trouble distinguishing between the appropriateness of words used at the mall and those used in the workplace. Ms. Earp also noted that young people have difficulties recognizing the difference between the media images of behavior and behavior that is appropriate at work. The Youth@Work Initiative provides information to a number of industries, such as fast food restaurants, retail stores, and the entertainment industry, that typically hire young people. One charge involved a learning-disabled teenager who was sexually harassed at a fast food restaurant by a 30-year old fry cook and a front counter clerk.  Despite the harassment, the restaurant did not discipline the harassers. Another example included a sexual harassment at a movie theater where an adult employee invited male teenage ticket takers into what was called the “candy room.”

The EEOC has posted materials on the EEOC’s Youth@Work website to help young people understand their rights to equal opportunity in the workplace.