Racial discrimination at work is treating an applicant or employee less favorably because of race, in hiring, pay, scheduling, promotion, discipline or any other term of employment.
| Decision | What to check |
|---|---|
| Hiring | Screening criteria that are not job related; referrals only from current staff |
| Scheduling | Who gets the best-paying or most wanted shifts |
| Discipline | Whether the same conduct leads to the same step for everyone |
| Promotion | Who is told about openings and who is encouraged to apply |
| Harassment | Slurs or jokes that a supervisor hears and lets go |
A restaurant’s servers earn most of their tips on Friday and Saturday nights. A server complains that she has had one weekend night in two months. The owner pulls 3 months of schedules.
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Of 18 servers, 7 are Black. Over 13 weeks there were 26 weekend night shifts with 6 servers each, 156 server shifts. Black servers worked 31 of them, about 20 percent, while being 39 percent of the server staff. The general manager, who builds the schedule, says he gives weekends to the people he trusts most, which is not a job-related standard anyone can check.
The owner replaces it with a written rotation based on availability and seniority, posts the schedule rules, and reviews weekend shift share by group each quarter. Without the schedule data, the pattern would have stayed a feeling no one could prove either way.
Most discrimination claims grow out of decisions that were never written down or checked. Three habits reduce the risk: write the criteria for scheduling, discipline and promotion before you use them; record the reason for each decision at the time; and review outcomes by group every quarter, the way the restaurant in the example reviewed weekend shifts.
Train supervisors on what to do when they hear a slur or a joke: stop it, report it, and document it. A supervisor who lets it go is, in practice, deciding what the workplace tolerates. Give every employee more than one way to report a concern, including someone outside their own reporting line, and protect people who report from any form of retaliation.
A call center’s records show that over a year, 12 agents were written up for being more than 10 minutes late 3 times in a month. Reviewing the attendance data, HR finds 19 agents met that same threshold.
The 7 who were not written up worked under 2 supervisors who rarely used the step. HR does not hand out 7 late write-ups. It retrains all supervisors, applies the threshold consistently from the next month, and checks the numbers each quarter. Both the employees written up and those not written up now face the same rule.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for employers with 15 or more employees, 42 USC 1981 with no employer size threshold, and state and local laws.
Refusing to hire, paying less, giving worse shifts, disciplining more harshly or allowing racial harassment, because of race.
Generally 180 days with the EEOC, extended to 300 days where a state or local agency enforces a similar law.
Investigate promptly, talk to the person who complained, the person accused and any witnesses, look at records such as schedules, document the findings and protect the person who complained from any backlash.
A single severe incident can be enough in some cases, and repeated comments often are. Every report should be taken seriously and investigated.
Many employers collect it voluntarily and keep it separate from decision-making, to check patterns. Some employers have specific reporting duties.
Digital HR forms, e-signatures and a digital employee file with expiry reminders, plus announcements by location, department or role.