A US agency, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is investigating Facebook for racial bias in hiring and promotions procedures. The commission designates its inquiry as “systemic”, and that means it suspects that the company’s policies may be contributing to widespread discrimination.
The information has been confirmed by attorneys who are helping three job applicants, and a manager in their quest for justice. They all claimed that the company discriminated against them.
EEOC is well-known for its typical push for resolving disputes mediation or allowing complaints to sue employers. When the agency designates a dispute as systemic, it enables investigators to bring in specialists to analyze matters by bringing in specialists to analyze company data and potentially bring a broader lawsuit that represents entire classes of workers.
The new discrimination accusation against Facebook came in last year, and the job applicants alleged that Facebook discriminates against Black candidates and employees by ‘relying on subjective evaluations and promoting racial stereotypes.’
The new designation of the EEOC has not been reported in the past, and the agency has not brought allegations against Facebook. It is hard to predict when the investigation will end and if the agency would succeed in finding any wrongdoing on Facebook’s part.
It is important that a company provide all employees with a respectful and safe working environment. Google is providing information about how it is committed to advancing racial equality for Black communities. Facebook itself takes any allegations of discrimination seriously, as affirmed by its spokesman, Andy Stone.
For US tech companies, increasing racial and gender diversity has been a constant challenge. These companies have also blamed a shortage of qualified candidates from underrepresented groups. Tech workers are now bold enough to say that the cause is biased employment practices that cause disparities.
Facebook revealed that about 3.9 percent of its US employees as of June 2020 were black.
