Answer

Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact

Any human Resource (HR) professional needs to understand all kinds of practices related to discrimination in workplaces and means of avoiding them (Cook, 2017). Intentional discrimination is usually referred to as disparate treatment, while the unintentional subtle type of discrimination is disparate impact.  These types of discriminatory practices affect employees’ performances at workplaces that consequently influence the overall performance of an organization (Foote, 2018). This paper examines a case study that involves disparate treatment and disparate impact, as well as, appropriate rules that can be implemented to solve such discriminatory practices.

Question #1: Laws That Are Applicable To This Case

            This case may be viewed as a violations of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, a federal law that safeguards workers against discrimination based on some specified aspects such as national origin, race, color, religion and sex (Cook, 2017). According to this act, the employer may not discriminate workers based on any condition, term or privilege of employment. Some of the areas that might give lead to breach of this act include hiring, recruiting, promotion, training, transferring, discharging, disciplining, measuring performance, as well as, providing benefits. The act applies to this case because most workers were discriminated based on their ethnicity especially the language that they speak. The human resource should understand that no worker employed by the company covered by this act or applying to work for such an organization should be denied employment or rather be treated differently regarding any decision made on the workplace based on the perceived religious, racial, sexual, national, or religious characteristics. Moreover, the human resource manager should understand that no worker should be treated differently based on her or his affiliation with someone who possess one or most of the protected traits. More importantly, decisions related to employment should not be reached based on assumptions or stereotypes linked to the protected traits.

The employment practices and policies may be discriminatory under title VII on the basis of disparate impact or disparate treatment. Disparate treatment is a form of discrimination where an employee is treated differently compared to other employees in a similar situation (Ellingson, 2018).  In fact, it is an intentional form of discrimination where an employee feels that the employer is treating them badly because of their religion, race, age, gender, or any other protected trait. However, before making a disparate treatment claim, the victim should in the first place prove that he or she was ill-treated by the employer (Cook, 2017). Besides, the employee must proceed to validate that the ill-treatment was based on the characteristics mentioned above.

In lawsuits involving disparate treatment, arguments always surround the extent of similarity of the treatment compared to other employees with different protected characteristics (Foote, 2018). Besides, another argument surrounding lawsuits involving disparate treatment is whether the employer’s decision was based on the concerned employee’s protected characteristics or the decision made by the employers were as a result of other reasons. A good example involving disparate treatment is when a cashier was claiming that he was intentionally fired because he was African American.

On the other hand, a disparate impact is a form of employment discrimination that results from effects associated with the employment practice or policy. Therefore, it is the unintentional manner of practicing discrimination (Ellingson, 2018). One factor to keep in mind is that Unite States’ laws prohibiting employment discrimination also cover other forms of discrimination, including disparate impact discrimination covering apparent and neutral practices and policies. An example of the disparate impact is a situation where the company’s hiring process is barring female applicants (Khandekar, 2016).       

Question #2: Whether to Institute a Complete Ban on the Staff of the Hotel

             It is inappropriate to implement a complete ban among the employees of the hotel since there are many native Spanish speaking assistants who are working for the same hotel. As a fact, in case the manager decides to ban the Spanish totally, the native Spanish speakers are unlikely to work effectively and appropriately as before. More importantly, instituting a complete ban on the staff working on the hotel will make such employees to feel that they have been discriminated or mistreatment that can result in the discrimination lawsuit against the company.

            Intuitively, title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 explains reasons why the above discussed case is regarded as a disparate treatment since all the native Spanish speakers are all working for the company where other workers from various ethnic backgrounds are working. As a fact, other workers are free to speak in their native dialect, which in this case is English. Therefore, mistreating workers simply because they speak in their native language violates CRA.

Similarly, although employer can make a strong argument by proving that all employees, regardless of their racial affiliation, are subjected to the same treatment after receiving more than three warnings, it will not be a solid ground to ban all native Spanish staff from the hotel. The employer’s ability to prove that other races have undergone the same treatment apart from African Americans can be good enough to win the case. Intuitively, the human resource can prove that employees made some remarks by calling one of the customer as monkey can prove that the employee exercised discrimination but the prove is not sufficient enough to institute ban on all the native Spanish speakers from the hotel.

Question #3: Rules to Enact

             As a hotel manager, there is need to ban the use of Spanish language in the presence of customers unless in a situation where the customer is not fluent in English but the workers can speak Spanish with the customer under the table. Secondly, there is need to teach workers the essence of cultural diversity and the need to respect every customer, inculcate the most desirable and attitude into work since understanding and respective everyone’s culture is the fundamental attitude to work in any organization, particularly for hospitality industries or multinational corporations. For instance, document the mistake that an employee makes. One of the hotel’s attendants calls the black man a “money”, which is regarded as discriminatory remarks. Therefore, the case scenario provided is that of discrimination since the individual who has been referred to as monkey is a black man, and his skin color made the hotel attendant to discriminate him.

In conclusion, any form of discrimination is not allowed in the working environment, whether it is a disparate treat or disparate impact. Moreover, any employee who feels discriminated by the employee has the right to sue the concerned employer. However, the employee must present enough evidence to validate his or her claim. On the other hand, the employer also has the right to defend themselves from discriminatory allegations. Therefore, the HR profession requires adequate knowledge of intentional discrimination and the unintentional subtle type of discrimination.