Employment discrimination is illegal. An employer can’t discriminate against workers on the basis of things like age, religion, race or gender – just to name a few protected classes.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. Some employees are still discriminated against on the job. Employers will simply try to hide it or make other excuses. At times like these, it can be helpful to look for a pattern of behavior.
What does this pattern tell you?
The pattern can sometimes expose discrimination in ways that may otherwise not be immediately obvious. It can also show when the employer is simply making excuses.
For example, say that you are an African-American employee working at a company with 20 other employees. Three of them are also African-American, but the rest are Caucasian.
Over the course of a few months, the employer begins downsizing the workforce. Each of the African-American employees, including yourself, gets fired.
Your boss may have a different excuse each time. One employee may get poor performance reviews, another may be accused of causing conflicts with coworkers, while still another is accused of coming into work late.
It’s not necessarily difficult for an employer to hide discrimination by coming up with an excuse to fire someone – at least in an individual case. But if you look at the overall statistics – 100% of the African-American employees got fired and all of the Caucasian employees kept their jobs – this makes the discrimination clear.
If you have faced discrimination on the job or if you’ve been wrongfully terminated, you need to know about your legal options. This could be a serious violation of your rights.