Excellent point of view from a hiring employer. You hit the nail on the head citing how you would be at a competitive disadvantage had you discriminated job applicants.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Writes Op-Ed in Support of U.S. Employment Nondiscrimination Act
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Excellent point of view from a hiring employer. You hit the nail on the head citing how you would be at a competitive disadvantage had you discriminated job applicants.
You mean the land whose founders codified slavery into its Constitution?
Sincerely,
Another old codger
(and a huge fan of America. I feel lucky to live here. I also feel it's a responsibility to work to make the country better)
<posted by current evets>"Every regulation is merely another chain to bind the people."
Damn stop signs. The links are biting into my flesh.
Legislation can lead to social change: Businesses once thought having a black receptionist at the front desk, or a black in a TV ad, would hurt their businesses. Legislation and social change altered all of that. A small social awareness led to legislative change which enhanced the social change. I think that's what were seeing now.
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Ironic
Considering there's zero diversity on stage during Apple keynotes and whenever the camera pans around the audience I don't see any black faces and very few women. And please don't give me that bs about how there are no qualified black people or women, when I see plenty of them at Tech Schools and on college campuses.
Considering there's zero diversity on stage during Apple keynotes and whenever the camera pans around the audience I don't see any black faces and very few women. And please don't give me that bs about how there are no qualified black people or women, when I see plenty of them at Tech Schools and on college campuses.
So we need legislation to make sure all the semantics are such that all the pretentious asses are happy. Yea, that's important.
If they at all bother to write back, they now use, "We have decided to move forward with other candidates."
Even if you have questions or want to apply for some other position, you never hear from them again - they know they don't want you for their reasons...
Anti-discrimination = good, Affirmative Action = bad. Anything that rewards you for hiring any age, race, or gender over another is inherintly discriminatory. Disappointingly the US Gov't scores you based on your minority hiring practices and if you don't have enough non-white males you won't get their business even if your business is dominated by white males (talking about, say, college grads). Discrimination is still discrimination even if it's applied against white males but whenever a white male complains about it it's viewed as a joke as if no white male has ever had a problem getting a job.
I think the country would be better off if it were illegal to even track demographics - you hire the best person for the job, end of story.
EDIT: I meant to say college grads in a certain field - Nobody cares if you hire 80% female nurses but if you hire 80% male engineers people cry discrimination.
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I'm all for meritocracy but one thing you see over and over again as you age is how these things end up never living up to their "promise." And it usually has side-effects that were never anticipated.
There's a great quote: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who fail to learn history correctly are simply doomed.
There's a great quote: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who fail to learn history correctly are simply doomed.
Cook didn't write his piece to address race or gender inequality. He doesn't promote race or gender discrimination - I'm sure he finds it vile just as most people do, but he also doesn't care enough about it to write an op-ed piece; he's no different than most of the mainstream media these days. Discrimination based on sexual preference, is a different matter - something he (and most other mainstream media people) would find worthy of an op-ed piece.
It isn't that he or anyone else is being hypocritical; it's just the injustice du jour. And happens to strike home for him.
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Well the Supreme Court struck down a University of Michigan admission policy that quota'd minorities and gave them "bonus points" for being able to check a box. The Supreme Court has also struck down varying implementations of Affirmative Action associated with quota based hiring.
Not saying good or bad, but you can read the US Department of Labor comments on this page and links on this page:
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/hiring/affirmativeact.htm
No, you are pretentious because you get all wrapped up and and act offended because of semantics. You are pretentious because you feel you are so enlightened that you need to pick out two words out of my post and hold them up as not acceptable to you.
So you're feeling nostalgic for a brief period of timeover 200 years agowhen you believe this country was free ... except for over 50% of the people living in it: women, Native Americans and slaves.
That's you model for the "land of the free"?
Bad idea
It may be a great idea for companies like Apple that are larger than some governments but in general this would be a disaster.
I'm from Toronto, which claims to be one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, so I think I have a pretty good perspective. We have countless small businesses run by recent immigrants who target their own group as clients.
If a business owner only speaks Tamil and all their customers speak Tamil as a first language, they are definitely going to hire a Sri Lankan over an Italian. Should the government step in with some silly law and tell them they can't do that? As well as being better able to relate to the customers, the business owner probably feels he can interact better with the new employee and will get someone more likely to understand his way of doing things.
Besides that, is it really considered wrong if that business owner wants to give a helping hand to his countryman over someone else? He worked hard to build a successful business, if his sense of morality tells him to help people from his homeland first, what is so wrong with that?
This Nondiscrimination act would destroy small and medium business, and a non-issue for larger businesses. Maybe part of Apple's motivation for supporting this is to hurt small businesses that might some day threaten them.
It may be a great idea for companies like Apple that are larger than some governments but in general this would be a disaster.
I'm from Toronto, which claims to be one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, so I think I have a pretty good perspective. We have countless small businesses run by recent immigrants who target their own group as clients.
If a business owner only speaks Tamil and all their customers speak Tamil as a first language, they are definitely going to hire a Sri Lankan over an Italian. Should the government step in with some silly law and tell them they can't do that? As well as being better able to relate to the customers, the business owner probably feels he can interact better with the new employee and will get someone more likely to understand his way of doing things.
Besides that, is it really considered wrong if that business owner wants to give a helping hand to his countryman over someone else? He worked hard to build a successful business, if his sense of morality tells him to help people from his homeland first, what is so wrong with that?
This Nondiscrimination act would destroy small and medium business, and a non-issue for larger businesses. Maybe part of Apple's motivation for supporting this is to hurt small businesses that might some day threaten them.
I'm familiar with the site.
Please source where there say you have to hire 15% blacks.
And that would be my point.
When people think of Affirmative Action they're recalling policies that haven't been in existence for years.
I'm trying to point out that Affirmative Action as it's practiced today is not the program that people think it is.
They were free to do so - and accept the consequences (although they had no idea what those consequences would turn out to be). At that time, slavery was rampant around the world, and, even today, it is still rampant in many non-western countries.
I have always disliked the idea of honing in one instance as being the epitome of something bad, since it devalues the experiences of others in similar plight.
As for "making the country better" - according to whose parameters?
I wholeheartedly agree that there should be absolutely zero discrimination at all in this country. I pray that one day we won't need to legislate non discrimination and that we all will respect each other's differences.
No, because that's a tangible asset to the workplace and directly affects their ability to perform their job.
Being fired or not hired just because of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc is wrong( of course depending on the type of job. I wouldn't hire a male stripper if I was running a strip club with female strippers). You should be hired, promoted, fired, etc based on your qualities/skills not who you are. If you got hired, you were the best person for the job. Doesn't matter if you are gay, transgendered, white, black, etc. If you were promoted, you did your job well to earn more responsibilities, etc. If you were fired, you sucked.
Being hired just because of your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc is wrong too( again unless it is the type of job. See stripper example above). So yeah I hate AA as well. It's good intentioned, but it has caused issues.
This isn't about making a person who sucks be equal to a person who is qualified for the job. But, making people equal as human beings. It doesn't matter if you are white, black, gay, male, female, etc. You're equal as a human to me and the rest of humanity. You have just as much rights as a gay person or a woman. No less and no more.
Being hired just because of your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc is wrong too( again unless it is the type of job. See stripper example above). So yeah I hate AA as well. It's good intentioned, but it has caused issues.
This isn't about making a person who sucks be equal to a person who is qualified for the job. But, making people equal as human beings. It doesn't matter if you are white, black, gay, male, female, etc. You're equal as a human to me and the rest of humanity. You have just as much rights as a gay person or a woman. No less and no more.
They were free to make or not make those choices, and accept the consequences. Legislation forcing them to go a certain way is not freedom.
Exhibit A: Obamacare.
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Respect has to be earned. Should I respect a thief, for example, if I think that theft is wrong?
That's a stretch. The US Constitution granted a 20 year moratorium on the Federal government overturning state laws that related to slavery and this was in an era when the Federal government was far less prone to usurping state laws than today.
That's a whole different story.
A person unable to deal with the customers because of a language barrier is sufficient reason not to hire them.
Not hiring a gay man, even though he CAN do the job 100%, just because he is gay, is not a sufficient reason.