Affirmative Action: Re-visited - Issues
Eventually, jobs will disseminate upwards, but workers of different colors and positions will suffer old and new types of employment racism while working within the new sector. These areas of new racism may take on different forms as minorities climb upwards in high tech companies. Policies will have to continually change once workers are within the company, as new issues will arise probably as fast as technologies. Today, it can be seen that companies are beginning to infringe on rights once again. A few new areas of importance to consider or revisit are in testing employees, age discrimination, and in censorship of personal time. Hiring is a highly important area, which must be one of the evolving components in affirmative action policy; as the society we are headed towards will affect the jobs of everyone. In the past, the case of Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. in 1971 disallowed the testing of employees for hiring purposes for discrimination reasons. "The ruling represented the first time that the court required employers to validate tests they use for hiring and other employment purposes. The ruling also helped to redefine discrimination in employment hiring in terms of adverse or disparate impact." (Ong, 46-7). Sadly, still today according to a report by Annalee Newitz, testing can still be seen; "A 1999 survey of 1, 054 human resources managers conducted by the American Management Association shows that 44 percent used personality testing to select employees." (Newitz, 1). This is a problem because it further discriminates human beings arbitrarily. It is not based on hard work or education but on random answers to strange questions, which some know how to beat anyway. In the same realm of hiring among engineers, according to a report by Terry Costlow, "(engineers) claimed technology companies were trying to save money by hiring young engineers from overseas rather than more experienced engineers in the United States." (Costlow, 1). These companies apparently also discriminated against older engineers solely based on their own money saving agendas, not the engineers' expertise. These internal practices must be watched cautiously, to make sure that through all the bustle of technology rights and feelings are not violated.
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