The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Discrimination, in and of itself, is not a harmful action. For example, people discriminate all the time when they choose one particular restaurant over another or one movie over another. Such discrimination is based on each personÆs taste and personal experience. Employers also discriminate regularly, such as when they hire one job applicant over another because the former had more experience in the type of job advertised. Such discrimination is proper and expected and generally makes good business sense. However, democratic capitalistic economies are based on the belief that individuals, if given the opportunity, will work in order to get ahead (Fritz & Kleiner, 2000, p. 58).
Individuals only believe in and support capitalist notions when they believe they are democratically, i.e., equally applied. Improper discrimination in employment violates the principles of a democratic capitalist economy because it denies certain individuals the opportunity to benefit from capitalism. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the United States is the federal body that ensures that all Americans have an equality of opportunity in the American workplace. This paper explores the founding and function of the EEOC and the ways it seeks to reduce employment discrimination in the United States.
Before the 1960s, only employees who were in unions had specific protections of their rights in the workplace (Fritz & Kleiner, 2000, p. 53). The resulting abuses of workersÆ rights helped to lead first to the civil rights movement and eventually the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, and 1991, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 (Cicmanec & Kleiner, 2002, p. 3). In particular, the EEOC was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made it unlawful for employers to discriminate on the basis of r...