Disparate Impact/Disparate Treatment
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission protects employees when they feel they are being discriminated against. This discrimination can be direct and overt or subtle and unintentional. The two distinctions for these forms of discrimination are Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact. This paper will present one case study for each form of discrimination, the ruling of the cases, and how the cases affect the authors work environment at Novellus Systems.
In 1999, Mark Pasternak was fired from his state job, Office of Children and Family Services, helping troubled youths. While working 1995 until his release in 1999 Mr. Pasternak was forced to endure racial slurs, sabotage, and other abuses by his supervisor, Tommy E. Baines, who was of a different ethnicity. In 1998, the state performed an investigation and punished Baines by fining him $2,000. They did not remove him as a supervisor. A coworker of Pasternak's, who is of the same ethnicity as the supervisor, corroborated Pasternak's claim that the supervisor made derogatory remarks about Pasternak.
What makes this case so different from other discrimination cases is that Mr. Pasternak is white and Mr. Baines is black. Google searches for Disparate Treatment bring up mostly cases against companies where the plaintiffs are anything but white. This case stood out because of the reverse racism. In 2007 the jury deliberated for 10 hours and reached a verdict in favor of the plaintiff and awarded him $150,000.
In 1971, Duke Power Co. required an applicant have a high school diploma and pass two professionally developed tests. These hiring practices resulted in a disproportion of whites being hired more then blacks. A lawsuit was fired and went all th ...