Where Will EEO Laws Fit in Outsourced Economies?

The near guaranteed availability of employment opportunities in the U.S. has been wrapped up by off-shored and/or outsourced economies of modern times, resulting in higher unemployment rate and financial security uncertainties. But many believe that this isn’t the end of the game. Employers may optimistically look for ways to attract motivated workers whose time and energy could profitably be mobilized around business processes afresh. And employees may equally put excessive hours of work in production for the simple promise of getting paid latter. This situation, coupled with fierce competition and dwindled unionism, may result in an unobserved EEO laws. So the question is this: Where will EEO laws fit in outsourced economies?

 Logically, employers’ angry vision of mobilizing talented workforce and the intensified need for overproduction and efficiency might lead to a worrying trend—long hours at work and less defense for workers. If this happens, very huge majority of workers would have to make choices between long hours of work with disused EEO principles and global market reality: qualifications warfare in developed world economies and cheap labor availability in the emerging world such as BRICs. In fact, as Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, and Cardy argued in their book, Managing Human Resources, that the first decade of this century has shown an unhealthy environment for these trends.

Even though such situation may not favor employers, per se, it will tremendously decrease employees’ moral which, in turn, can inexplicably accelerate employees’ lack of motivation and enthusiasm in the company. This will force employers to compromise their long-term business bottom lines. The notorious employment-at-will would be buried down the process, for instance.

Worse, to counterbalance businesses and other stakeholders, the Affirmative Action might see itself expanding from its current jurisdiction to an indefinite applicability, covering every employee regardless of their employer. But such policy has first to undergo the typical filibustering talk on Capitol Hill. On his part, though, President Obama made it loud and clear during his presidential campaign, “As the pace of globalization has picked up, though, it’s not just unions that are worrying about the long-term prospects for U.S. workers”.

Moreover, making the popular “do-the-right-thing” adage really obsolete requires the government to become the primary watchdog for workers. And this isn’t a bad thing. The government was already at the forefront of defending workers, though with loose appetite for globally-backed market initiatives. The only thing here is that everybody should get their share of the pie. A common ground is highly necessary but with realistic yet progressive fight.

The first wave of such battle is going to be an extreme anxiety both for employers and the government. For starters, as of right now, the laws concerning HR practices are divided into two: EEO laws and everything else. Both of these laws will inevitably settle down for interpreted court and other statues actions in relation to market standards. Previously, employers used to have a leeway in areas such as hiring, discharging, performance, among other things; so long they had a business related policy in place to fight against law suits.  

The problem now would spell out differently. Employers can now avoid expensive litigation by producing in countries where EEO laws are nonexistent. To go around this, a free-market-based concept that favors a win-win scenario in everything would have to be forged. But as Kelliher and Anderson proposed in International Journal of Human Resource Management, that such strategy requires participants to bravely change course. Of course, organizations must standardize their objectives strategically to suite the situational bargaining in business-human capital relations.