Employment Law
Employees have the right to be treated equally when applying for a position or promotion. Before the 1960’s employers had the ability to hire and fired workers at will for whatever reason, which included discrimination of classes of people. Federal laws and the governing bodies created to oversee that the laws were not violated aided many in obtaining jobs previously not open to them because of race, color, national origin, sex, or religion.
Title VII
On July 2, 1965 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became federal law. The purpose of Title VII which is the Fair Employment Practices Act is to stop job discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex and religion. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the federal agency who receives complaints and investigates the charges. In the beginning, the law applied to business with 100 employees and then worked its way to reaching companies with as few as 15 employees, federal, state and local governments, employment agencies and labor unions.
The EEOC’s first case determination was that any corporate policy requiring firing of female employees when they marry violates Title VII. (EEOC, 2009) The airline stewardess filed a complaint because the airlines only hired single women and had an age ceiling of 32 or 35 where in which stewardess were no longer allowed to work cabin service. They either had to retire or work ground service. The stewardess’ were also terminated if they married. This rule did not apply to men.
Although many cases were filed beginning in 1965 it would not be until February 1968 that the EEOC released a blanket ruling denying sex a bona-fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) for the flight attendant occupation. To be legal a BFOQ had to be a business essential and job related. (Cheeseman, 2007) In December of 1967 the Age Discrimination in Employment Act was passed by Congress, but it did not contain explicit provisions...