Minorities: last hired, first fired - Mundo Latino: news events

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, Feb-March, 2003

Despite increased diversity initiatives in the work place, such strategies have apparently not affected the general belief that minorities are the last hired and the first fired, according to a survey by the job search website WorkplaceDiversity.com. Answered by people who visited www.WorkplaceDiversity.com in December 2002, the survey found that 72 percent of respondents believe that minorities are unfairly targeted for layoffs. Fifty-nine percent gave racial and gender bias as the primary reason for unfair treatment, followed by a lack of minorities in decision-making positions. In addition, nearly 70 percent of respondents indicated that ethnicity and gender are disadvantages in seeking employment in the current labor market.

One possible reason for the belief that minorities are unfairly targeted is that organizations' diversity initiatives and goals may still be unclear to employees. According to the survey, 76 percent of respondents indicated that employers do not have clearly defined or communicated equal opportunity or workplace diversity programs.

"Companies must further support and empower their diversity departments to enable them to better communicate the commitment to workplace diversity and make employees more aware of the programs that will make that commitment a reality," said Dan Honig, CEO of WorkplaceDiversity.com. "Otherwise," said Honig, "companies may make themselves vulnerable to even lower employee morale or possible discrimination lawsuits."