Three Laws Hiring Managers Need to Know

While legal problems can crop up during an employee's tenure, the two events that carry the most legal risk for employers are the hiring and the departure of an employee. This is why there are laws in place to protect both the employers and the potential employees. Some of the laws that do this are: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Equal Pay Act of 1963, and The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.

The first law that Hiring Managers need to be aware of is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law prohibits workplace discrimination based on a person's race, color, sex, religion or national origin. In 1964 Congress passed Public Law 88-352 .The provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. In the final legislation, Section 703 (a) made it illegal for an employer to "fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or discriminate against any individual with respect to his or her compensation, terms, conditions or privileges or employment, based on an individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The final bill also allowed sex to be a consideration when sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the job. Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.

The second law that Hiring Managers must be aware of is The Equal Pay Act of 1963. This law protects men and women who perform substantially equal work from sex-based wage discrimination. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. Which means the job content (not job titles) determines whether jobs are substantially equal. All forms of pay are covered by this law, including salary, overtime pay, bonuses, stock options, profit sharing and bonus plans, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement