Equal Employment Opportunity Laws Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Equal Employment Opportunity Laws - Essay Example The federal laws prohibits job discrimination in the fields of payment based on sex, age discrimination, discrimination against people with disabilities, discrimination based on genetic information, race, ethnic, color, religion, sex or national origin (Bizmanualz, 2008). The EEOC provides coordination and oversight of all the EEO policies, regulations, and practices. The Equal Pay Act (EPA) enacted in 1963 protects all women and men working in the same work group, or establishment, from discrimination in wage rates based on sex of the worker. The minimum wage of Section 6 provides that no employee shall receive less pay than that of his or her colleagues of the opposite sex (Cook, 2009). The Congress passed the EPA as an amendment of the previous Fair Labor Standard Act in 1963. The EPA contains the regulations from the Fair Labor Standards Act, but with a concise statement and brief description of the problem that it covers. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, famously known as Title VII , prohibits discrimination of employees based on color, religion, sex, race, or national origin. It also covers discrimination against people associated with people of different religion, color, race, sex, or national origin. The law also prohibits the employees to retaliate an employee because they complained of discrimination at the workplace. Further, it requires the employer to accommodate the religious practices of the employees, unless a defense on Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications exists. Nevertheless, the exceptions to this law are rare. The Civil Rights enactment was under the presidency of John F. Kennedy. After his assassination, his Vice president Lyndon Johnson pushed for enactment of the bill terming saying that the country owed it to Kennedy’s life. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X became international figures as they were advocating for the enactment of the bill through Civil Rights Movements (Bizmanualz, 2008). Despite the enactment, both the Black and Wh ite communities engaged in protest, with the black claiming that it did not cover enough areas and the whites enraged with its passage. Regardless of the protests, the Act proved to be of great importance to the social and political development in America. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 protects employees and job applicants aged 40 years and above from discrimination based on age. The discrimination may be in promotion, compensation, hiring, discharge, privileges, and conditions of employment. Other regulations that prohibit age discrimination at the workplace include The Age Discrimination Act of 1975, and Section 188 of Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998. The amended Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act of 1990 recognize and protect the equal rights of Americans with disabilities. It is models after the act of discrimination against race and gender. The Act addresses the disability issues under five titles. Title I caters for access to workplaces for the disabled people, title II protects their access to Local and State services, title III centers around commercial facilities and places of accommodation, title IV contains requirements to telecommunications companies to provide relay services for the disabled people, and title V contains miscellaneous instructions to the agencies to enforce the law. Congress enacted the law with intentions of creating a permanent civil rights law protecting