JOB DISCRIMINATION COMPLAINTS ARE ON THE RISE
On March 6, 2008, an article appeared in the New York Times, reflecting the increase in complaints of discrimination in the workplace. The article went on to state that, “federal job discrimination complaints by workers against private employers rose by 9% last year, the biggest annual increase since the early 1990s.” According to the statistics, this was the most filed since 2002.
Based on the article, one might reasonably conclude that job discrimination has intensified. Another reasonable conclusion might also be that more individuals who suffer discrimination in the workplace have been able to observe, from their experiences, that those who complain of discrimination do not suffer the results of reporting discrimination to the same extent they did previously. They have had an opportunity to witness friends and colleagues in the workplace who have reported discrimination but somehow did not suffer the results of discrimination for reporting what they recognized was a violation of their human rights.
There is a reasonable likelihood to believe that it is not necessarily the increase in discriminatory conduct that caused the number of individuals who report discrimination to be greater than before. Instead it will be that they have learned that reporting discrimination does not necessarily produce retaliation. The strong retaliation laws that our lawmakers have enacted throughout our country have, in large part, effectively protected those who report discrimination from the retaliatory conduct they feared in the past. This is certainly a hopeful result.
