affirmative action

As a business major with a concentration in Human Resources we learned all about affirmative action plans. Similar to our first reading for tomorrow I agree with what affirmative action does and what it is trying to accomplish. My HR book defines this practice as: "employers are urged to hire groups of people based on their race, age, gender, or national origin, to make up for historical discrimination." This definition, in my opinion helps the argument of those who disagree with affirmative action. Those people argue that they were not the people who enslaved African Americans, thus they should not have to pay for mistakes they did not make. this definition fails to mention that this is one way minorities can tip the scales to a more fair and balanced playing field on the search for jobs. As it said in the article white males face many privileges they do not want to give up, and getting better jobs is one of those. My HR book also goes on to tell us how to write an affirmative action plan, which I think is very interesting on how they decide who to hire based on the definition.

The first step is to do an availability analysis which will identify the number of protected class members (anyone but Christan white males) who are in the labor market you are hiring for.

The next step is to do a utilization analysis to see how many protected class members you already have working for you and what types of jobs they hold.

You then calculate the under utilization statistics to see if your company is a representative sample of the protected class members in the labor market. If it is not then you set a plan to hire more people of the protected classes so that you may meet your goals.

It should be noted that some government agencies actually require affirmative action plans to be submitted once a year and then reviewed to ensure that they are being followed through on.