Job Discrimination
Job discrimination can be described as a situation where the job environment (either at the employment level or during the actual real working environment) is unequal to all the employees in the organization. Job discrimination in organizations, institutions and government sectors manifests itself by existence of unfair treatment of employees or potentials employees by those in charge: supervisors, managers, colleagues and company directors, as a result of the varying characteristics and diversity among them (Ellen, Elisa, Grant, & Stewart, 2001: 2). According to OECD (2008:12), job discrimination arises from biases, prejudices and hollow effect arising from the diversity that must exist in any one organization or institution. While employees and other individual attached to an organization are discriminated against on the basis of natural variables such as, gender, race, physical structuring body color, ethnicity among others, the organizational policies can be pressing so some employees and favorable to others, thus amounting to structural discrimination (Mirage,1994:51).
During recruitment for instance, if the interview panel is composed of mainly blacks, the black panelists may tend to develop some hallow effects against the white hence develops a bias towards them. The chances of a white being employed thus reduces not because the white candidates are not fit for the positions or because the considered blacks are better than the latter; this is absolute job discrimination on racial grounds. According to Ellen et al. (2001:5), discrimination at work place is to a great extent a major contributor to employees’ dissatisfaction, fallout with managers and supervisors and cause of high rates of employee’s turnovers in organization. In addition employees’ discrimination leads to unjust treatment of some employees in the organization, some workers enjoy certain privileges while the others do not which may be a source of fallout between the employees themselves and which is to a greater extent likely to compromise the quality of work life in the affected organizations (Ellen et al. 2001:5, OECD, 2008: 4). In addition poor performance and low productivity are likely to follow suits.
In this scenario, Maria being the Latino employee in the company with communication disability (accent problems) and the only female employee, there has been developed some prejudices from her supervisors, leading to biased treatment toward her in terms of promotion and handling of her characters such as biased accent, slowness and frequent absenteeism with claims of having to attend family matters. The purported discrimination which is engraved both in her personal natural characteristics and company’s policies threatens to affect her quality of work life.
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