Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Protecting your job against discrimination.

G'day Everyone!

Discrimination. It's an ugly word used every day among the hearing and the deaf on both sides of the job market. It's a horrible word. It's a word used more often than a 4 letter swear word could ever hope to break apart a person's career.

Discrimination breaks a lot of people. No matter what sexual orientation, gender, color, creed, nationality, and religious background you have, you will be discriminated. It's a proven fact because office politics play a major part in discrimination on the job.

Please read the following site: http://deafness.about.com/od/employmentandworking/qt/resolvedisc.htm

Jamie Berke has provided some wonderful information out there. Something way useful and important to learn.

But, not every one in the deaf community knows the info to use to help them on the job. Especially if you have been sexually harassed on the job. Worse yet, if there's office politics, you don't want to be a part of it!

In all my working years, I've seen some of the best and WORST companies. I won't name any organization out there. But, I can tell you this: There are bosses who care about their employees that they work with and there are bosses who don't care anyone other than the person above him and polishing that ass of theirs to get a "promotion" that they DON'T deserve to have.

I've seen many types of discrimination on the job out there. I know for a fact some employees (who are power bullies)will do a discrimination on someone and when they realize that they picked on the wrong person, who's bound to report them, and then will run to their supervisor and beg for "protection". The supervisor is most likely bound to try to intercept the report of discrimination in hopes of preventing it from reaching it's intended destination: Human Resources or the upper level management.

By doing that, the supervisor will have "the talk" with the 'abused' employee. By doing "the talk", the supervisor is doing an illegal action. Reality: Supervisor is trying to save his/her job and the employee's job from being fired by the bosses if the 'abused' employee's accusation get to them. This is known as political sweeping under the rug from the boss. But it's also unfortunate because some day, sooner or later, they're gonna wish they had both not messed with the 'abused' employee for any reason. It's illegal in any case of what the power bullies do and what supervisors do: Discrimination.

More importantly, colleges with career centers like Gallaudet University, RIT, PSU, Syracuse U (to name a few) should hold seminars and workshops to teach students on how to deal with office politics and discrimination situation. In every case, document of what happens on the job. Keep a daily diary. That's going to be your most important goal of protecting your employment should you ever have to face a legal issue.

So stop bullies in their tracks. Discrimination doesn't have to happen. By talking to human resoruces, bullies need to be reported. Your career and your employment is more important than stupid office politics and bullies.

Semper FI to Jamie Berke.

2 comments:

Deaf Pixie said...

Divison Vocational Rebabautional discrminated me for mental illness. Which I dont have mental illness at all. They force me to fight with Court Hearing on monday because of situation the therpist say that DVR and I have a conflict disagree about my mental illness. DVR accused me everything I said STOP abuse on me. You should not TOLERENT on deaf client who really need to urgent to find a job for my daughter's medical expense is too expensive!

Anonymous said...

I am behind you in 100 percent about job discrimination. I know some of bosses can be arrogance on abused employees.

Some Human Resources are not 100 percent protect the employee’s rights. You have to be cautious to report some complaints to HR because sometime HR shared the information to bosses and changed the scenario.

Just report to HR first if it failed then report to EEOE. You must have solid evidence with you like degrading / discriminate emails which is big plus. Never use verbally communicates with bosses since they knew that they can manipulate the scenario. You must use written communication with any bosses as black and white evidence.

I have one best and dumbest story about my boss in my previous job. I was the only Graphic Web Designer for the Real Estate Seized Property Company up to 50 employees. My boss expected me to have up to 5 mistakes a year. I had to handle multitask works such as juggling between projects to projects , updating the website, working with outside Printer Vendor and dealing with clients. Average up to 20 property a month between flyer, newspaper ads, auction application, bidder card, and website. I had to look over the Real Estate property lists along auction dates t/ location through my clients. I found lot of errors on property taxes, parcel number, wrong dates, incorrect description and last minutes changes. (Very common for Real Estate) It was property manager’s responsible to confirm the real estate list for correct information. I tend to contact the clients and let them know about errors. We proofread the project three times before produced the flyer and sent out the printer vendor as met the deadline. Suddenly, client came up to me and admitted me that they messed up. Thats how I noticed my boss tried to find a way to scapegoat on me for their mistakes.

"We've got to be responsible, somebody's got to be responsible for it." Sir George Downing