You are the operations manager at an electric-car company, and you need to hire

Question

You are the operations manager at an electric-car company, and you need to hire many more employees to meet increasing sales demand. The CEO of the company proposes that the company relax the current hiring policies that are too restrictive. She recommends that the company change the policy to hire more healthy, dynamic, energetic, single (i.e., not married) men, and pay the new employees less. With the new policy, the company will have lower labor expenses, more productive, and have to provide less sick/family time. Write a recommendation to the CEO, and explain the potential issues, if any.

Explanation / Answer

I would recommend the below.

While hiring more employees to expand the operations, we need to ensure that we are following the employment laws. According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers are prohibited from discriminating against employees based on sex, color, race, national origin and religion. Hence the company cannot hire only men as it may lead to discrimination law suits based on sex. The organization can hire men only if women cannot perform the essential functions of the job successfully.

According to Americans with Disabilities Act, the employer covered by ADA should not exercise discrimination during any aspects of employment including hiring. The employer needs to provide reasonable accommodation to the job applicant with disability unless doing so would impose undue hardship for the employer. Hence we should be careful while hiring more healthy, dynamic and energetic employees. The policy may lead to discrimination law suits based on the law if a person qualified for the role is treated unfavorably based on disability.

The Equal Pay Act requires the employer to provide equal pay for equal work. Hence it would be illegal if the company provides low wages for the newly hired employees if both new and old employees are sharing equal work. The Family and Medical Leave Act also should be followed by the employer with more than 50 employees which insists on providing job protected and unpaid leave for the qualified employees for certain medical and family reasons.

The company would have to follow the federal laws which would make it difficult to implement the policy changes suggested by the CEO. But employment laws apply only to employer-employee relationships and these laws do not apply to independent contractors. Hence the company can apply the policy changes if they hire the workers as independent contractors instead of employees. Though there would not be physical control over the physical work performance, the labor expenses can be much reduced.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse Y
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.