This assignment involves employment discrimination law. Chapter 14 of our textbook is entitled Anti-Discrimination Law and it covers employment discrimination law. Please read Chapter 14 and use that information as necessary to complete this assignment. This is the link to the textbook:
Assignment
Read the cases and situations below, and answer the questions for each case or situation. Sometimes, there are multiple questions associated with a case or situation. Please read each question carefully, and answer each one completely.
Situation 1
(Answer all QUESTIONS)
Peter, a man, and Lois, a woman, are both employed on the production line for Quahog, Inc. They do the exact same job. Peter makes $1 per hour more than Lois. What federal law might be violated in this situation? If a lawsuit is filed under your identified law alleging that the law was violated, what defenses might Quahog offer? Explain.
Case 1 (12 points)
Paulinho Petricelli’s Premium Pork Producers, Inc., produces pork products that are sold throughout the United States. Petricelli’s employs more than 800 people at its processing facility, which is located in the town of Sunburnt Hollow, a city in the southern U.S. Sunburnt Hollow has a population which is 60% white, and 40% black.
Patricelli’s requires a high school diploma, or a High School Equivalency Diploma, as a condition for working on its laundry services team. The laundry services team is comprised of fifteen employees, all of whom are white, and does all laundry work for Petricelli’s. 80% of white people in Sunburnt Hollow have a high school diploma or Equivalency, while only 20% of black people in Sunburnt Hollow have a high school diploma or Equivalency.
QUESTIONS:
Is Petricelli’s potentially violating any federal law(s) in this scenario? Fully explain which law(s) may have been violated, and how a lawsuit is likely to proceed, and be resolved, under the relevant law(s).
Case 2 (12 points)
Sondra Chelanski worked as a customer service representative in the customer service center for Superior Service Solutions, Inc. In her job, Chelanski answered telephone calls from Superior’s clients. Chelanski suffered from Spina Bifida, a relatively rare birth defect that occurs when the spine and the spinal cord don’t form properly. Chelanski’s condition required her to use a wheelchair to get around.
Chelanski was fired for excessive tardiness after working at Superior for approximately a year. Chelanski said that her repeated tardiness was because of her inability to find adequate parking. The customer service center’s large parking area only had two van-accessible, handicapped parking spaces-spaces large enough for a special-needs vehicle to operate a ramp or motorized lift. These two spaces were almost always occupied when Chelanski arrived, forcing her to either wait for a space to become unoccupied, or to find an alternative parking space.
Chelanski also claimed that the layout of Superior’s customer service center contributed to her excessive tardiness. The customer service center is in a room with hundreds of cubicles where individual customer service representatives answer customer calls. Cubicles are not assigned to specific customer service representatives. When customer service representatives report for work or return from lunch, they sit in the first cubicle that they find. Most employees simply look over the top of the rows of cubicles to find an available workstation. However, this option was not available to the wheelchair-confined Chelanski. She was forced to wheel through each row and examine each workstation. This time-consuming process was made more challenging by the narrow aisles in the customer service center, making it difficult for Chelanski to navigate obstacles such as stray chairs or colleagues. Her search was further complicated by the fact that not every workstation was fully operational. Occasionally, a workstation would be available but missing a headset, a microphone, or some other necessary equipment.
Before being terminated, Chelanski suggested some solutions to her tardiness problems. First, she suggested that she be given a few extra minutes to return to work from lunch. She argued that this would help her to find both adequate parking, and an available workstation. She also suggested that she be assigned a specific workstation in the customer service center so that she wouldn’t have to always try to find one. Superior did not use any of these suggestions, and terminated Chelanski.
QUESTIONS:
Sondra Chelanski believes that she may have suffered employment discrimination in this situation. Fully describe how this case is likely to proceed, and be resolved, as Ms. Chelanski pursues her claims.
