According to a report from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the second-largest reason for discrimination allegations in the United States is racial discrimination. Around 35 percent of the cases involved alleged racial discrimination, which shows that the percentage is holding steady in recent years.
After racial discrimination came sexual discrimination. This included a lot of related topics. For example, it dealt not just with discrimination based on someone’s gender, but also on sexual harassment in the workplace and discrimination against those who had become pregnant.
These two are often the most commonly-cited reasons for discrimination in the workplace, and they’re often the first things people would say if asked about the issue in New Jersey. So, with their prevalence and the amount of attention they get, what ranks No. 1 overall, spurring the most complaints?
The stats show that the biggest issue is discrimination that is carried out as a form of retaliation. There were 37,955 such cases in 2014, which is 42.8 percent of the total.
Retaliation can happen for many reasons, and could be connected to other charges. For example, if a person is sexually harassed in the workplace and files a formal complaint against his or her boss with the Human Resources department, the boss could then retaliate by cutting that person’s hours, firing the person, or doing anything else to create a hostile work environment for the worker.
Have you been subjected to any of these types of workplace discrimination? If so, you need to make sure that you know what rights you have under U.S. labor laws.
Source: EEOC, “EEOC Releases Fiscal Year 2014 Enforcement and Litigation Data,” accessed Nov. 25, 2015
