The Great Recession of 2007: Job Discrimination in the United States

Disparate treatment is considered intentional discrimination. It is “treating similarly situated employees differently because of prohibited Title VII factors”. (Bennett-Alexander etal pp 95) Anheuser-Busch, Inc., v. Missouri Com’n on Human Rights, is an example of a prima facie disparate treatment case. In this case, an African-American woman was subjected to disciplinary action for committing the same infractions as three of her white co-workers. The employer failed to punish all of the employees alike and had no reasonable explanation for reviewing

11. Federal legislation has been enacted to protect workers against wage discrimination (e.g., Equal Pay Act of 1963, Civil Rights Acts of 1964and 1991, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967). These laws prohibit paying male employees more than female employees unless the wage difference is justified on the basis of:

The recession of 2008 is also called the ‘Great Recession’, said to have begun in December 2007, and took a turn for the worse in September 2008, and it was a severe economic problem expanded globally. This recession affected the world economy, and is said to have been the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. The decline in the Dow Jones this time was -53.8%. Since the official start of the recession in December 2007, and through June 2010 there have been about 2.3 million homes foreclosed in the United States. In 2012, the state with the most foreclosures in January alone was California, with 51,584 houses being repossessed. Unemployment during this collapse was 8.5%, and continued to increase to about 10% as of 2010. People’s reaction to this recession was a huge decrease in spending and borrowing from banks, but an increase in saving.

Historically, the United States in 1938 enforced a Fair Labor Standard Acts that prohibits employers to pay women less doing the same job in the same organization with male counterparts. In 1963, the law was amended to Equal Pay Act. It addresses pay rate inequality by some employers. Due to age discrimination, the 1967 Age discrimination Act addresses discrimination against those 40 or older. Fascinating fact that the ADEA, 1986 amended prevents upper age limit and banned early retirement (Carden, 2014, p. 58). Also, OWBPA Act of 1990, allow older workers benefit financially to retire (Carden, 2014, p. 50). Another historic law governing discrimination is the American with Disability Act (ADA) created in 1990. It was interesting such law applies

Disparate Treatment. Given the fact that disparate impact refers to any legal doctrine that state that a law may be considered to be discriminating and unappropriated towards a particular group based on the panel's race, color, sex, disability, national origin, religion, or family status, I would take the above scenarios to fall under disparate treatment which represent any unlawful deed in the United States of America labor laws. It means any different behavior directed to someone due to their race or gender.

Equal Employment Opportunity laws are intended to give all specialists reasonable thought on the premise of occupation execution as opposed to any insignificant individual variables. The Equal Pay Act restricts sex segregation as wages paid to men and ladies doing the same kind of work, in occupations that require a similar fitness and responsibility, with equivalent working conditions, in a similar association. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.

The Great Recession began in late 2007 and quickly spread throughout the world. The downturn provided continuous high unemployment, a spreading foreclosure crisis, and minimal consumer spending.The crisis threatened the viability of financial institutions with deep exposure to defaults and foreclosures (Love & Mattern, 2011). Bank after bank were either closing down or merging just to stay afloat. This led to banks reducing their lending which made it both difficult and expensive to borrow money. This fall in consumption and investment led to businesses decreasing labor which further hurt GDP and unemployment saw an all-time high. This effect was not only felt in the United States. Countries that had exposure to the US also suffered from the

Disparate treatment: Forms of discrimination in which members of different races/sexes are treated differently in the workplace. For example, if an organization denies a job applicant because she is pregnant.

The economic meaning of a recession is that the gross Domestic Product (GDP) has declined for two or more consecutive quarters. Unemployment rises, housing falls, stocks fall and the economy is in trouble. Whenever the government sees that the economy is entering a recession it is important for it to act. The U.S acted in two ways during the Great recession of 2008 through fiscal and monetary policies. Renaud Fillieule identifies that “ Monetary and credit expansions have been the main tools used by the U.S. government and central bank to try and recover economically from the Great Recession of 2008” (Fillieule r, Pg. 99 2016). These Keynesian policies are debatable among economist, none the less they were implemented and put the U.S on the road to recovery.

The U.S. experienced a significant economic decline in December 2007. This was the Great Recession. A recession is a huge drop in consumer spending that has a chain reaction of job lose, and lower business income. It can be caused by an economic shock. And economic shock is when products are priced more than their value. 8.8 million Jobs were lost within 2 years, February 2008-2010. Unemployment was nearly 10% in October of 2010. Since 2012, GDP and employment has made a very slow growth rate. The poverty rate increased to 12.5 % in 2007.

This recession was a combination of the United States recession, that lasted from December of 2007 to approximately June of 2009, and the global recession in 2009 that proceeded. The recession in the United States was a result of the banks’ inability to pay off their accumulated debt. It all began when there were housing booms, which involved mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), or stocks backed by mortgages. Due to the real estate market collapse in 2007, those securities declined in value and jeopardized solvency, or “the ability of a company to meet its long-term financial obligations”, of banks that were too much in debt. Though there were many major problems that resulted from the recession, the drastic increase in unemployment rates became the biggest negative effect of the economic crisis. According to the statistics from The Encyclopedia of the Great Recession, “By March 2008, 63,000 jobs were lost, the most in five years…” (Rosenberg, 599: Unemployment). During the period of decline in economy, revenues decreased and businesses stopped expanding. Moreover, when demand was too low to support the businesses, employers needed to reduce their spendings and save money by lowering wages, stop hiring new workers, and firing old ones. The Great Recession, therefore, initiated the mass discharge of employers and reduced job opportunities for immigrants who had come to

The main difference between disparate treatment and disparate impact is the intentions of the employer. Disparate impact involves a policy which the employer may not have intended to be discriminatory, but affects one particular group more than another. Disparate treatment involves action by an employer which is definitely intended to discriminate against a particular group, such as different pay rate for women and men. There are several kinds of disparate treatment claims that can be brought against an employer. A claim can be brought against an employer that is paying women less than men that are performing the same job duties. Another claim against an employer could be the lack of promotion based upon gender. Ultimately any employer that

The Equality Act of 2010 governs organizational, personal responsibility, and liability towards the equality of opportunity and diversity. The Act seeks to protect workers against any form of discrimination through the aforementioned protections. These protections include: race, culture, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, disability, and sexuality. In the case of an opportunity, workers should be judged based on their qualifications, experience, and skills whereas, for diversity, people from all walks of life have the right to employment provided that they meet the required criteria. The Act requires both employers

Many people that are among the minorities of people in the U.S. are facing problems getting hired in certain jobs or facing discrimination in the workplace. Discrimination and harassment in the workplace can come in many forms. And although such misconduct can sometimes be overt, such as the use of racial slurs or denial of advancement opportunities, it can also be subtle or even concealed. Job discrimination is a problem in the U.S. that has been occurring since the 1960s even though there have been civil laws passed to prevent such acts, but the laws are often ignored due to employers wanting certain people to work in their workplace who could qualify for their preferences.

Disparate impact and disparate treatment both refer to discriminatory practices. Disparate impact is frequently referred to as unintentional discrimination, while disparate treatment is intentional. The terms adverse impact and adverse treatment are sometimes used in place of disparate impact and disparate treatment. Disparate impact occurs when policies, procedures, practices, rules or other systems that appear to be neutral result in an inconsistent impact on a protected group. For example, testing every applicants and using results from that test that will inadvertently eliminate certain minority applicants unreasonably is disparate impact. Disparate treatment is intentional employment discrimination. For example, testing a particular skill