The field of human resources management is profoundly shaped and subjective to federal and state regulations controlling employment concerns in the United States. The human resource professionals help their companies to obey a wide range of state and federal laws and implementing procedures. The federal laws publication brings together the importance of federal employment laws that human resource professionals are working in private or public needs to be familiar with. The following federal and state laws control all human resource management functions, and they include staffing, appointment, promotion, and reimbursement.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is a law that plays a significant part in human resources management laws which impacts every HRM functions. This is a legislation that restricts companies from harassing or prejudicing their workers grounded on identified characteristics such as country of origin, ethnicity, sex, religion, color. Under Title VII, an employer should not victimize an employee concerning some conditions, privileges, or terms of employment. Areas that may give rise to abuse of this Act includes hiring, recruitment, training, assigning work, disciplining, transferring, discharging, promoting, providing benefits, and appraisal (Graglia, 2014).
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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to employers operating in either public or private business sector, and they have employed not less than 15 employees working in their companies. The law is also applicable to employment agencies, labor unions, and to both the federal and the state government. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the body that enforces this act. The Title VII, cover employees already working in a company and restrict employers from denying employment opportunities to people applying to work in an organization and treating them differently in respect to any form of workstation decision on the center of alleged, sexual, national, spiritual, racial features (Graglia, 2014). No worker should be handled differently centered on his connection with somebody holding any of these protected features. Furthermore, employers should restrain from making employment decisions based on assumption or stereotypes connected to any one of these protected characterizes. For instance, it is illegal for a company manager to decline to endorse a Filipino employee to a supervisory position since she or he believes that the Philippines cannot be excellent leaders.
Discriminatory policies in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
Occupation practices and policies may be biased under Title VII, grounded on either unequal impact or imbalanced treatment. Contrasting treatment arises when an employer intentionally discriminates an employee. For instance, in a football team with a rule that females have no power in deciding for the team infringe Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibition against sexual harassment. Likewise, workers that fit in a protected class should not be physically isolated or segregated from other clients or employees. For Instance, it is unlawful for big companies to employ only Hispanics for office jobs in the area mainly dominated by Hispanic people or to give primarily white people office job in a location with huge white people population (Graglia, 2014). However, an exemption for disparate treatment exists when the job is bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) that does not necessarily need to adhere to protected characterizes. Therefore an employer can acquire a positive defense on the basis that even though a particular condition seems purposely biased, it is a BFOQ requirement for once to attain this job. For instance, when producing a TV show if the position available is for someone to play the role of President Barack Obama, then the producer will have to look for an African American male character, although this appears to victimize people through their sex and race.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act restricts companies from implementing impartial job strategies that diversely impact people in protected classes. However, those employers who introduce a rule purported present unequal impact always try to defend themselves on the basis that the implemented policies are essential for business growth as well as it is a requirement for the company. An ostensibly fair policy that promotes certain designated people to apply for the job and either hails from the same religion, race or sex, there is no doubt this policy has a diverse impact on job seekers, and they can claim they are the victims of intentional discrimination because of the protected characterizes. For instance, if the company policy is to employ male applicants who are graduates from Harvard University in the United States, then this policy could result to a diverse impact, undesirably impacting females and other minority groups.
The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act restricts workers harassment grounded on the victim’s membership in a protected group. Any form of workplace harassment can have severe and unwelcoming impacts on employees and should be stopped. If an employee is harassed, it is essential for him or her to notify the offender that his behavior is offensive as well as let the employer know. Failure to notify the employer can negatively impact the harassment assertion. For instances, when a supervisor or a colleague keeps on proposing and asking another employee for sexual favors, the worker is entitled to report his claim to the human resource department that she is sexually harassed (Graglia, 2014). The worker also should use the complaint actions defined in the occupation contract and allot his employer some time to rectify the problem before filing an allegation to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The act prohibits an employer from reacting to an employee who opposes provocation under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, for making a discrimination claim or taking part in an equal employment opportunity commission investigation of a discriminatory claim.
Davis-Bacon Act of 1931
This is a legislation that was sanctioned during the start of great depression period. The law demands firms to remunerate workers local “prevailing wages” for a construction project such as a highway project that is partially federally funded or fully funded by the federal government. For many years the act has ensured that contractors or subcontractor pays employees a fair wage that is equivalent to the level of their effort, particularly to white employees who belongs to a labor union. However, this law is said to act as a formidable entry barrier for unskilled and less skilled employees taking part in the construction sector and racial motivation to prohibit African from contending with white workers for jobs. (Glassman et al., 2008).
The David Bacon Act was enforced by the Congress in 1931 and demanded companies to pay employees working on-site a fair weekly wage, benefits and overtime compensations in all federally funded construction, repair alternation in all contracts that are valued to be over $ 2000 (Glassman et al ., 2008). The impact of this legislation is that the living standards for employees have improved since they are paid wages that is above the minimum wage. On-site employees are no longer competing with immigrants for labor jobs since the minimum wage has been set and employers are unable to exploit workers by forcing them to accept low pay in order for them to secure a job. The act has greatly enhanced the welfare and the working condition for on-site employees who are white United States citizens.
The impacts of this Act to the immigrant have been immense. This act was enacted to restrict back people from competing directly with the unionized white employees. Even today, this discriminatory effect continues to be witnessed where minority communities in the country are underrepresented in a highly-skilled labor union and over-represented in a pool of semi-skilled or unskilled employees. Therefore this law has been characterized to influence and prohibits economic opportunities for low-income individuals.
The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932
The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 is a federal law that governs employment issues in the United States. The law is named after two republican senators know as Congressman Fiorello H. La Guardia and Senator George William Norris. The above two Senators proposed and supported this bill until it was signed to become a law. The main reason why the two senators proposed this Act was to stop any form of anti-labor injunctions that resulted when workers tried to regroup themselves to form to become members of the labor union, and also the law protected employers (SHRM, 2014).
The passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act outlawed employees from using court orders in labor quarrels banned, and any form of yellow-dog agreements was declared illegal. A yellow-dog agreement is a treaty that involves a worker and the company whereby a worker agrees, as a term of occupation to refraining from becoming a labor union member. Also, the yellow-dog contract worked as a treaty between employees and leaders of the labor union, whereby the labor union would not sign in employed workers in order to help them keep their jobs.
This is the first-ever known federal law in the country to support organized labor unions and remarkable significant triumph in labor reforms. This legislation impacted most of the employees negatively, the Act demanded employers be paying employees their salaries on time, but most of the time, employers delayed to compensate them their hard-earned money. Employees could not afford to support their relatives together with injustices that ascended since they grieved from fierce practices, strikes, and harm from the labor organizations. The legislation also impacted employees negatively, since the act restricted the issue of federal order on employee’s strikes, boycott, and picketing to the extent that there would face incarceration.
Although the federal court acted on the best interest of employers, the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 pressed for unbiased judgments on the interest of both the employer and the court. The Act furthermore profited companies since workers were not tempted to boycott or go on strike since their efforts were regularly compensated and worked in environments with good conditions (SHRM, 2016).
Even to date, the Norris-LaGuardia Act prohibits the issue of court injunctions to employees for striking, picketing, and boycotting. Even though other legislations were implemented after this Act to protect labor rights, campaign for much better working conditions and equal employment opportunities, most of the lawmakers believe that the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 created the path. A recommendation that was made to change the act was that even if the legislation prohibited the yellow-dog contract, there should be some agreement that worker could be given to sign in order to comprehend to what extent a bad behavior would cost them or forming strike for purposes that were not relevant.
Wagner Act of 1935
The Wagner Act is primarily recognized as the National Labor Relation Act. The act was developed and enacted by congress to ensure the right of unionization by the workers. The National Labor Relation Board was the body that took responsibility for implementing this act. The primary role of the National Labor Relation Board is to carry out investigations and determine if the allegations presented to them by employees of employers and labor union involving themselves in unfair labor practices. The board also performs secretive ballot election within companies to determine if employees require a labor union to present them or not. The Wagner Act assures un-supervised workers the right to select their representative, be organized and bargain their grievances in a unified manner with their employers, involve themselves in practices with the aim of bargaining collectively, join an organization or form a labor union (Fossum, 2012). However, the act does not allow employees to engage in actions that are against what the act stipulates. It is relatively clear that the Wagner Act authorizes employees to self-organize, refrain from organizing or bargain their grievances jointly.
The Wagner Act applies to almost all employees who take part in most economic activities. However, the act does not cover employees who work in railroad, agriculture, government, and airlines. Over several decades, the wager Act has subsequently been reformed, and pertinent laws have been created and enacted by the federal courts from the original act. For years the act has termed labor union and employers that infringe employee rights to be criminal, and their actions are punishable by the United States criminal justice system (Vega, 2014). The Wagner Act formed the National Labor Relation Board is a self-governing body that administers the laws, examine the allegation, and conduct trials for victims that have been subjected to unfair labor organization practices. The board has the mandate to examine the issue, deal with employers or labor unions that are found guilty for carrying out unfair labor practices on their employees, examine union certificates and determine what makes up employee bargain units.
Conclusion
The system of federal and state legislation that are in existence to control labor relations and employment are comprehensive. In most scenarios, these regulations apply only in companies with an indicated smallest number of workers, and therefore, fail to control smalls firms. However, other rules relate workers/ companies relations, nevertheless of the company scope. Therefore, firms of all scope need to be well-informed on regulatory and legislative development in the United States.
References
Fossum, J. (2012). Labor Relations: Development, Structure, Process (11th Ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Glassman, S., Bachman, P., Head, M., & Tuerck, D. G. (2008). The Federal Davis-Bacon Act: The Prevailing Mismeasure of Wages. Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University.
Graglia, L. A. (2014). The supreme court's perversion of the 1964 civil rights act. Harv. JL & Pub. Poly, 37, 103.
SHRM. (2016). Norris LaGuardia Act. Retrieved December 19, 2017, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/norris-laguardia-act.aspx
Vega, B. (2014). Diving into labor relations. Lecture presented at Intro to Labor Relations in CO, Pueblo
