Do employers positively discriminate?

[Frankie Jack]

That's one of the worst things about being being disabled and trying to get work. It isn't that a lot of disabled people are unable to work, or unwilling to work, it's that the level of prejudice against the disabled (especially long-term disabled people) makes it at best very difficult to for us to even get a foot in the door.

Having some pillock at the Jobcentre, safe and secure in their nice job, with their nice pension and their nice salary and their nice perks, giving you grief about not finding work when they probably already know full well the reason for you not being able to get any (or could find the reason with one look at your file), is just an extra and entirely unhelpful twist of the knife as far as I'm concerned.

Oh yeah... I've been questioned as to whether it was really me signing on as my signature had changed in comparrison to the one they had on record... I had to explain that my right hand fingers had become increasingly worse due to the M.S. and that I didn't write the way I used to... Thankfully another advisor knew me and could verify I was who I am...

My usual advisor is 59and female and asks me how I'm getting on menopausally when I sign on...

hehehefuckin he... lol

 

[Thora]

In my experience it does happen.

I once was interviewed for a job where even the other candidates said I had the best experience and qualifications for the job. However, it went to a black woman, it was explained to me that this was because ethnic minorities and woman were under represented so the chose her. She said she felt a little cheated that it wasn't on her own merit. (She still took the job though!)

When I was still in the UK in one office I was refused promotion, I was told, unofficially that this was because they needed more minorities represented, and even though I had the most experience and qualifications....

In another office I was told that there weren't enough 'white' people at my level so they would overlook me so that they could promote a white candidate.

So, from my experience alone, yes positive discrimination does take place.

In some situations though could someone's gender or ethnicity mean they are better for the role? For example, there are very few men working in early years care/education, so if an equally qualified man and woman go for a job in a nursery maybe it would be better to hire the man so as to provide male role models.

 

[pengaleng]

I just used to say to my 'advisor' when they asked if I'd found any jobs to apply for 'yeah, but I don't particularly want to dance on tables or hand out flyers for shit nightclubs because thats the only part time work there is' < and yes I did swear.

I also moaned at her once because the JC phoned me up asking me if I want to work for them, like as if, they get paid less than mc donalds staff. Told them to jog on.

 

[ericjarvis]

I get the impression a lot of people don't understand how the process is supposed to work.

If the system is set up properly it works like this. First you advertise a vacancy. You note where the advertisements are placed and the cost. When people respond to the ads you send out an application form, monitoring form, job description and so on, AND an explanation of how the recruitment process will work.

When applications are received the first thing that happens is that the monitoring forms are separated. The application forms go to whoever chooses which candidates to interview. Meanwhile somebody else collates the information from the monitoring forms and compares it to the relevant demographics. They should also look at how the various different advertisements worked both in terms of equal opps and to see how cost effective the different advertisements were. That's what the monitoring form is for, to see how the demographics of the applicants compare to the rest of the population, and to see how the different forms of advertising work. Later on the form isn't relevant. They monitor you by you not the piece of paper.

Candidates are selected for interview simply by checking off requirements for the job against the information on the application. The aim is just to select out all the adequately qualified applicants for the first round of interviews whilst making as few assumptions as possible. Then the first interviews happen. Every interview should be conducted by the same interviewers asking the same basic questions to each candidate. At the first interview stage this should pretty much be on the basis of assessing honesty, experience and competence. Pretty much a matter of checking against a list of requirements to see who gets the most boxes ticked. That then leads to the selection of candidates for the final interviews.

That's the first stage at which ANY form of positive discrimination should take place. The best candidates have to be interviewed regardless of anything else, but if there are equally qualified candidates on the cusp of being selected for the final round of interviews it is perfectly reasonable to look at positively discriminating in favour of under represented groups. So if there are six final interview slots, four clearly outstanding candidates and four fairly evenly matched but not quite so good on paper, it's at this point that the gay black guy and the disabled white woman might be given preference to the equally matched pair of able bodies straight white men.

The final round of interviews should again be largely on the basis of the same interviewers asking each candidate the same questions, but at this stage there should also be follow up questions. It's at this stage that it starts being important to select the right person rather than simply select the right experience and qualifications. So the whole process becomes a lot less "scientific". However, at the end of the final interviews it should be pretty clear who is right for the job. This is the other stage at which positive discrimination can take place. If there isn't a clearly best candidate then it is reasonable to choose between otherwise equally matched candidates on a basis of favouring under represented groups.

People talk about positive discrimination as if it's a straight jump between receiving the application and that final decision. What really happens is that there has already been a basic selection process that doesn't take race, gender, sexuality or disability into account. Then a selection process in which positive discrimination is only used to top up the last places for the final interviews. At the last ONLY if there is no other clearly justifiable way of selecting a single "best" candidate is anyone selected by positive discrimination.

If the procedure is done even remotely competently there isn't any question of a weaker candidate getting a job because of positive discrimination. It's simply something used to select between pretty much equally qualified candidates.

 

[pengaleng]

you assume that companies do everything by the book.

 

[Bakunin]

I just used to say to my 'advisor' when they asked if I'd found any jobs to apply for 'yeah, but I don't particularly want to dance on tables or hand out flyers for shit nightclubs because thats the only part time work there is' < and yes I did swear.

I also moaned at her once because the JC phoned me up asking me if I want to work for them, like as if, they get paid less than mc donalds staff. Told them to jog on.

Sadly, the lowest paid and crappiest jobs, jobs that nobody else actually wants and that most available folk will have already turned down, seem to be the only thing that a lot of disabled people can get or are likely to be offered. If we're actually offered a job at all, of course.

It's deeply frustrating, wanting to work and not being offered work you know you can do, simply because of some recruitment bod's ignorance or outright bigotry. Eventually, I found myself saying 'Fuck it. I'm entitled to go long-term sick, I'm going to go long-term sick because it's pretty damned obvious that nobody around these parts is actually going to offer me any job that's worth having.' And by 'worth having' I mean a job with a decent living wage and working benefits that actually make it a job I can manage to live on.

 

[ericjarvis]

That's one of the worst things about being being disabled and trying to get work. It isn't that a lot of disabled people are unable to work, or unwilling to work, it's that the level of prejudice against the disabled (especially long-term disabled people) makes it at best very difficult to for us to even get a foot in the door.

Some years back I was at a joint meeting between the Community Health Council and the Local Health Authority. The CHC had given me the brief of looking at equal opps matters at the meeting. So I asked the chair of the HA (John Garnett, Virginia Bottomley's dad) why they had again applied for an exemption to the legislation requiring they hire at least a few people with disabilities. He answered by claiming they were attempting to investigate which jobs could be done by "the disabled". I pointed out to him that his job should be first on the list, not least because he clearly didn't understand that people aren't either completely able bodied or wheelchair bound, blind, deaf, dumb and epileptic.

Chair of a bloody health authority ferfuxache. Worse still none of his senior staff had pulled him up on it. I think the way it works should be changed. There should be the possibility of registering people as disabled, not disabled, and too fucking stupid too live. The latter category being people who have no concept of what disability means, and dealt with by requiring that no organisation hire more than 2% of their work force from amongst them. We could also demand they pay extra taxes. Possible there should also be a special Olympic Games for them featuring heading the shot, catching the javelin, tiger dressage, white water tyre rafting etc.

 

[ericjarvis]

you assume that companies do everything by the book.

Nope. I assume that when they don't the problem isn't positive discrimination, it's a crap personnel department fucking things up.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

I thought the equal ops section was removed from the main application form, and simply used for monitoring? Or maybe not. even if it did, there is obviously room for discrimination ("pos" and "neg") with obviously ethnic names, "working class" addresses, ages and other shit.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Nope. I assume that when they don't the problem isn't positive discrimination, it's a crap personnel department fucking things up.

What about companies small enough not to have a "human resources" department?

 

[dessiato]

I don't really read books anymore, can't concentrate for long enough, shame really, I used to enjoy reading, now it just does my head in.

Still the most beautiful and sexiest person I've never met. Refreshingly blunt and honest too.

 

[pk]

It does so depend though. There are plenty of places who would be happier employing a white, british male.

Of course. It's not as though anyone is saying white brits are being marginalised in the way that South Africa is struggling with.

What I find more offensive is the notion of a job being offered to someone with less qualifications and credentials just because of their skin colour.

You may as well say "You're not the best candidate, but I need a few ethnics in here to make my company look like a Benetton advert".

Fucks sake. This isn't 1960's Britain. Plenty of black, asian, yellow, white, brown and even female people I work with and need advice from that are way, way more qualified than me. I got further as a white Brit than many other people back in the 80's, and I know it.

I'd just prefer to work on a playing field where skin colour or jobsworth box-ticking for the right-on was irrelevant to the work at hand.

I've seen it first hand, mainly at the BBC but also at other big established firms.

It's fucking pathetic, and do you think anyone boosted up the ladder just because their surname is Begum or Adebole is actually grateful for the leg-up?

Skipping the two years training or whatever to make the HR department look good puts people in the deep end, and treats them like idiots.
In a team environment, you'll find people embarrassed to be there if the boss is speaking for them, "oh English isn't his first language" and all that shit.

Fuck off.

You achieve things on your own terms, you don't play on skin colour to win anything otherwise you're as bad as the morons in the BNP.

 

[N_igma]

I don't think it exists tbh

It does.

I have seen civil servant job notices in the papers here that actually say they would particularly welcome women and Catholics more because they are underrepresented in that particular job.

 

[bouncer_the_dog]

Im confused about posative discrimination. either you do or you don't. Where I work all the top people are male and white.

 

[innit]

It does.

I have seen civil servant job notices in the papers here that actually say they would particularly welcome women and Catholics more because they are underrepresented in that particular job.

that means they would like to encourage applications from them, not that those people will have an advantage at the interview stage (they won't)

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

...Should I go into politics..

Well the odds in favour of a random wild card independent candidate being elected are probably higher now than they've ever been in the past or will be again in the future.

Not sure if it's too late though, won't there be a deadline for registering as a candidate? Why not check though...

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I don't really read books anymore, can't concentrate for long enough, shame really, I used to enjoy reading, now it just does my head in.

How about collections of short stories? If a novel is unmanageable, maybe an anthology of short stories or poetry would be do-able?

 

[pengaleng]

I prefer snuff movies.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Where I work all the top people are male and white.

that's clearly because they are the best people for the job out of all candidates

after all, there's no positive discrimination there is there?

 

[internetstalker]

Do employers positively discriminate?

The fire service do.

I think any sort of descrimination in wrong

 

[blues]

In my experience it does happen.

I once was interviewed for a job where even the other candidates said I had the best experience and qualifications for the job. However, it went to a black woman, it was explained to me that this was because ethnic minorities and woman were under represented so the chose her. She said she felt a little cheated that it wasn't on her own merit. (She still took the job though!)

When I was still in the UK in one office I was refused promotion, I was told, unofficially that this was because they needed more minorities represented, and even though I had the most experience and qualifications....

In another office I was told that there weren't enough 'white' people at my level so they would overlook me so that they could promote a white candidate.

So, from my experience alone, yes positive discrimination does take place.

I said this on here once years ago and someone took major offence, saying it was bollocks. Glad to see awareness is better, but sad to see the situation hasn't improved.