Building a Diverse Workforce Through Nondiscrimination
Bruce E. Schwab
OMGT 5113 – Human Resource Management
October 9, 2012

Building a Diverse Workforce Through Nondiscrimination
American history has been marked by its people’s persistent and determined efforts to expand the scope of their civil rights. Although equal rights for all were affirmed in the founding documents of this country, many American’s were still denied essential employment rights. Because of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, many laws were passed and enacted barring an employer from discriminating against employees on most grounds. Aside from the quality of an employee's work or the nature of his or her personality, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibited an employer with 15 or more employees from discriminating based on race, national origin, gender, or religion (Dessler, 2013). Although under Title VII it was deemed illegal for an employer to refuse to hire or promote, or to unjustly fire, demote, or harass an employee, the law failed to address important equality of pay issues, acts of age discrimination, and discrimination against individuals with disabilities (Dessler, 2013). As a result, federal and state governments enacted additional laws that barred employer discrimination in these three important areas. This paper will describe and discuss how the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 came to be. Moreover, this paper will address why the world of human resources must understand, abide by, and execute these three crucially important Equal Employment Opportunity Acts.
Equal pay for the sexes
Because a large number of American women took industrial jobs during World War II, the National War Labor Board had no choice but to urge employers in 1942 to voluntarily adjust salary rates of