Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

As we approach the year 2000, there will be more females, members of racial minorities, individuals over the age of 40 and disabled employees in the workplace than ever before.1 For employers, labor organizations and public policy makers, the term diversity must take on increasingly significant meaning.2 Yet future scholars may look back on our time and say, as Charles Dickens did about the last decades of an earlier century, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Attendant with this dramatic demographic change in the workplace are numerous federal, state and local Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) or antidiscrimination statutes and ordinances. These statutes include, but are not limited to, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; the Pregnancy Disability Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; and the Civil Rights Act of 1991.3 All represent good public policy. As a matter of public policy, our industrial society has recognized that sexism, racism and ageism shall not be used as a basis for depriving individuals of the privilege or the right to contract their labor.4 Consequently, it is now essentially unlawful for an employer or labor organization to discriminate against individuals based on their race, sex, or other “immutable characteristics.”5