Employment Discrimination
Employment Discrimination laws seek to prevent discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, and age. A growing body of law also seeks to prevent employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Discriminatory practices include bias in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, compensation, retaliation, and various types of harassment.
Cry Wolf Quotes
The new law would pretty clearly restart the time clock for filing the claim when an employee receives a retirement benefit, a pension benefit, even an (employee stock ownership plan payment). In doing so, the Ledbetter Act exposes employers to endless liability…[it is an] unprecedented expansion [of employment law].
…the Secretary of Labor becomes prosecutor, judge, and legislator. He is given extensive authority to intervene and interfere in employer-employee relations. He must build a considerable Federal division of his Department to accomplish this purpose at increased cost to the taxpayers….Further, the Secretary is not required to await the complaint of an aggrieved employee. He is empowered to prevent any person from engaging in the prohibited wage discrimination. He may proceed on his own motion. There is not limit to the interference with efficient operations or the amount of snooping which may result in an effort to uncover evidence concerning existing or possible future wage discrimination.
This bill would allow an employee to bring a claim against an employer decades after the alleged initial act of discrimination occurred. Trial lawyers, you can be sure, are salivating at this very prospect.
I know that there are variables from plant to plant and business to business, and that if an attempt is made to regiment all industrial relations, individual businesses will suffer—their employees, especially women, can face unemployment—and the national economy will be weakened.
Related Laws and Rules
Evidence
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The Americans With Disabilities Act Didn't Cause A Flood of Lawsuits
Employer warnings of frivolous lawsuits in the wake of Americans With Disabilities Act were proven false.
Resources
University of California-Berkeley Labor Center carries out research on labor and workplace-related issues.
National Committee on Pay Equity is a coalition working to eliminate sex- and race-based wage discrimination and to achieve pay equity.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research is a prominent think tank that is largely focused on American women's issues. This covers everything from pay equity to welfare reform to domestic violence.
