MGT 434 Week 1 EEO Law and Affirmative Action Example

Hiring Servers, Cooks and Managers Fairly Across 24 Restaurants: EEO Law and the Changing Rules on Affirmative Action at Bluebonnet Hospitality

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MGT/434: Employment Law

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Bluebonnet Hospitality Group and all workforce data are composites written for a model paper; laws are summarized generally and should be confirmed with counsel.

Bluebonnet Hospitality Group, a composite restaurant company based in Austin, Texas, runs 24 restaurants under three brands and a catering division, with 1,900 employees. Most are hourly: servers, bartenders, hosts, line cooks, prep cooks and dishwashers. A review of its workforce showed that servers are 72 percent women and 80 percent white, while line cooks are 85 percent men and 78 percent Hispanic. A former server recently filed a charge with the EEOC alleging she was denied a bartender position because of her age. A workforce sorted by job along lines of sex, race or age is not proof of discrimination, but it is a signal that an employer must understand. This paper explains EEO law and affirmative action and applies them to Bluebonnet.

The Federal Antidiscrimination Laws

Four federal statutes do most of the work (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2019). Title VII, passed in 1964, makes it unlawful for an employer of Bluebonnet's size to let race, color, religion, sex or national origin shape hiring, pay, assignments or firing. A 1967 statute extends similar protection to anyone 40 or older. The 1990 disability law covers qualified applicants and employees who have, or are regarded as having, a disability. The 1963 pay statute bars paying a woman less than a man, or the reverse, for jobs of substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility in the same establishment.

Texas Law

Texas law, enforced by the Civil Rights Division of the Texas Workforce Commission, largely mirrors Title VII and covers employers with 15 or more employees. Charges can be filed with either the state or the EEOC, which share cases.

The EEOC and the Charge Process

An employee who believes she faced discrimination generally must file a charge with the EEOC within 300 days in Texas before suing. The EEOC may investigate, attempt mediation or issue a right-to-sue notice. Bluebonnet must respond to the former server's charge with records of the bartender hiring decision.

Disparate Treatment

Disparate treatment is intentional discrimination. The former server must show she met the job's requirements, lost out and saw a younger applicant hired instead. Bluebonnet must then give a legitimate reason, such as a stronger cocktail certification, and she may try to show the reason is a pretext. Records of who applied, how they were evaluated and why the choice was made are essential.

Disparate Impact

Disparate impact covers rules that look neutral on paper but screen out one group far more than others without a job-related reason. If Bluebonnet required bartenders to have worked three years as servers, and servers are mostly women, the rule could screen out men; if it required English fluency for kitchen leads without job need, it could exclude Hispanic workers.

Reading the Workforce Data

Job sorting can arise from many causes: who applies, word-of-mouth hiring, managers' assumptions or real differences in experience. Bluebonnet's data show that applicants for server jobs are mostly white women and applicants for cook jobs mostly Hispanic men, largely through referrals. Referral hiring can reproduce existing patterns even without intent.

Promotion Patterns

Kitchen manager promotions go almost entirely to bilingual line cooks, and dining room manager promotions to servers. As a result, women rarely become kitchen managers and Hispanic men rarely become dining room managers. Since manager pay is similar, the concern is less about pay than about access to general manager roles, which require experience in both areas.

Sex as a Job Qualification

Some managers believe certain jobs suit men or women better. Title VII allows sex to be a requirement only where it is a bona fide occupational qualification, a narrow exception courts rarely accept, and customer preference is not enough. A manager who steers women toward hosting and men toward the line, even with good intentions, exposes Bluebonnet to claims. Training managers to describe jobs by their duties, not by who usually holds them, reduces this risk.

Harassment and Retaliation

Antidiscrimination law also covers harassment and retaliation. Restaurants face elevated harassment risk because of late hours, alcohol and tipped work that depends on customer goodwill. Bluebonnet needs a clear complaint process, prompt investigation and protection for employees who complain, since retaliation charges are the most frequently filed type with the EEOC.

What Affirmative Action Means

Affirmative action refers to proactive steps to widen opportunity for groups that have been underrepresented, such as targeted recruiting, training and goals. Holzer and Neumark (2000) reviewed evidence and found that affirmative action shifted employment toward women and minorities, with little evidence of weaker performance among those hired.

Affirmative Action for Federal Contractors

For decades, Executive Order 11246 required federal contractors to maintain written affirmative action plans for women and minorities. Kurtulus (2016) found that contractor obligations increased the shares of women and minorities in contractor firms, with effects strongest in earlier decades. In January 2025, a new executive order revoked Executive Order 11246. Contractors still have obligations for veterans and people with disabilities under separate laws.

Limits on Preferences

Outside court-ordered remedies and narrow voluntary plans, employers may not hire or promote based on race or sex. Recent legal and political developments have increased scrutiny of diversity programs. Lawful approaches focus on widening the applicant pool and making selection fair, not on preferences.

Recommendations: Recruiting

Bluebonnet will post all jobs publicly as well as through referrals, recruit through community colleges, culinary programs and workforce centers that reach diverse applicants and track applicant flow by job.

Recommendations: Selection and Promotion

Managers will use structured interviews with job-related questions and keep notes. Promotions to manager will be posted, with cross-training between kitchen and dining room offered to all interested employees, so women can build kitchen experience and cooks can build dining room skills.

Recommendations: The Age Charge

Bluebonnet will gather records for the bartender decision, confirm the reason and review whether bartender hiring favors younger candidates across locations. Managers will be trained not to make age-related comments.

Conclusion

Bluebonnet is covered by federal and Texas antidiscrimination laws, and its job sorting by sex and ethnicity calls for review, not conclusions. Affirmative action plan requirements ended for most contractors in 2025, but lawful outreach, open posting, structured selection and cross-training can widen opportunity while complying with the law.

References

Bennett-Alexander, D. D., & Hartman, L. P. (2019). Employment law for business (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Holzer, H., & Neumark, D. (2000). Assessing affirmative action. Journal of Economic Literature, 38(3), 483-568. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.38.3.483

Kurtulus, F. A. (2016). The impact of affirmative action on the employment of minorities and women: A longitudinal analysis using three decades of EEO-1 filings. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 35(1), 34-66. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21881