Page 241 - Introduction to Business

CHAPTER 6 Human Resources Management 215

Federal Legislation After 1960
Equal Pay Act. The Equal Pay Act prohibits unequal pay for men and women
doing equal work. Equal work means jobs that require equal skill, effort, training,
and responsibility and are performed under the same working conditions. For
example, this law would require that men and women graduating from the same
college with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and taking the same job with the
same large accounting firm be paid the same. While this seems obvious today, it was
not so obvious forty or so years ago. At that time it was not unknown for employers
to pay female college graduates doing the same job as males less on the grounds
that they weren’t supporting families or that they would be leaving the workforce
soon to have families. The Equal Pay Act does permit some limited exceptions to its
mandates; for example, male and female pay differentials are allowed where they
are based on quantity of job production. The Equal Pay Act does not address the
issue of male and female pay differentials where jobs are different but deemed to be
of equal worth, that is, the issue of comparable worth.

Civil Rights Act of 1964. This watershed piece of federal legislation pro-
hibits organizations with 15 or more employees from in any way discriminating
against their employees on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.
This law covers all aspects of human resources management from selection and
recruitment to promotions, compensation, access to training, discipline, and
discharge. This law is administered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC), which has offices throughout the United States. The EEOC Commission (EEOC) The federal agency
that administers U.S. employment
investigates employment discrimination complaints and can take cases it feels
discrimination laws
meritorious to federal court or give the complainant the authority to take his or her
case to federal court on his or her own. In recent years the EEOC has placed an
emphasis on trying to conciliate or mediate many of the complaints it receives, as
a way of dealing with its burgeoning caseload.

Age Discrimination Act of 1967. This law, as amended in 1986, outlaws
discrimination against Americans over 40 and most company mandatory retirement
policies (certain types of employees like airline pilots can still be forced to retire at

Female employees, led by Betty
Dukes (right), have recently filed a
major class-action lawsuit against
the Wal-Mart Corporation. The suit
alleges widespread company sex
discrimination in violation of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wal-Mart is
the nation’s largest private sector
employer and the outcome of this
case will be watched closely by
human resources professionals
throughout the country.

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