ed health care benefits when they change employers. The HIPAA, thus, protects a valuable benefit associated with employment; however, the HIPAA does not affect direct money wages and salaries. The HIPAA also deals with the privacy of medical information and fraud associated with the reimbursement of health care providers for health care services delivered. The primary effect of the HIPAA on the cable television industry is the requirement to assure that employees do not lose continued access to health care insurance during transition periods associated with changes in employment.
Equal opportunity and fair employment practices legislation has been enacted and enforced (with varying degrees of vigor, depending upon the philosophical stance of the administration in power) since the early-1960s. In theory, government regulation designed to eliminate employment discrimination should have no adverse impacts on business and industry, for in theory discrimination between individuals in relation to hiring, promotion, retention, and compensation would be based only upon performance or upon performance potential.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established under the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This agency directly affects the actions of employers and employees in the cable television industry with respect to the conditions of employment related to racial and ethnic background, national origin, age, and disabilities (Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, 1993).
Gender equality emerged as a salient political and legal issue in the United States in the 1960s (Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1989). The issue of gender equality was not new at the state government level, as state law historically had "defined the political and civil rights and the legal capacities of women" (Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1989, p. 63). Federal initiatives with respect t...