Espinal I

Jiselle C. Espinal

Philosophy 151

7 December 2018

DISCRIMINATION
Chapter 8 of the book Applying Ethics describes discrimination in

employment as making an adverse decision against employees based on their

membership in a certain class. It explains the case of McAleer vs. AT&T. It is

interesting to know that thought the U.S. District Court in Washington ruled that

McAleer was to receive monetary compensation but not the promotion.

Professor Lisa Newton wrote an essay titled Reverse Discrimination as

Unjustified. Professor Newton was able to pinpoint the main issue surrounding

affirmative action. As she stated clearly, Reverse discrimination cannot be

justified by an appeal to the ideal of equality. She speaks a lot About how wrong

reverse discrimination is if it is not done in a measurable way. How can we

measure reverse discrimination? How much reverse discrimination is actually

needed to wipe out the discrimination that took place in the past? And I ask, is

this even measurable? We have to come to a point where our society is indeed

equal. For us to achieve that reverse discrimination has to go away. We cannot

claim to be treating all citizens with equality when in order to favor a group that

was previously discriminated, we have to discriminate others.

I worked for Amazon.com for five years. I was a witness to reverse

discrimination almost every day, just in a different form. Caucasian male

managers were being accused of discriminating workers. The managers were

just trying to do their job. A Hispanic or a female manager would perform the

same actions and have no problems. Lacking the statistical part, this satisfies

point 1 of evidence of discrimination as describe in this chapter which states

there are reasonable grounds for thinking that an institution is practicing

discrimination when statistics indicate that members of a group are being

treated unequally in comparison with other groups.

Working in a Wearhouse is difficult in general. It was even more difficult

for my manager, whose name I will not disclose, to properly manage his team of

300 employees comprised mainly of Hispanics. I am Hispanic, and I saw my

manager walk on egg shells trying to not “seam” racist or discriminatory.

Amazon.com has strange Human Resource policies regarding harassment and

the treatment of minorities. For a manager or anyone in a leadership position to

correct an employee it was a bit frightening.

My manager was a hard-working Caucasian male that entered as a

regular floor associate. He applied to become an ambassador which was a

trainer position and was promoted. He was an ambassador for a year. He

applied to be a Process Assistant was promoted once more. Six months later
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he applied to be an area manager and became the first associate promoted to

management without a college degree nor the five years required for the

position. He was autistic and trained himself to look at people when he spoke,

not turn his head when he was walking and straightened his leg. He told his

associates how hard it was for him to get to where he was and inspired so many

to work hard and move up as well. His score card was always a 4/5 which was

the highest among his team.

I was part of a program called Tier-1 ALPS. Out of 100 applicants only 15

participants were chosen. They gave us college level leadership classes. Part of

the PA’s job is to move associates to fill positions in other areas needed and

remove all production barriers associates may have. Removing barriers was

sweet and sour. Pleasant while helping those who really needed help and sour

when we had to hear the associates that just did not want to work making up

excuses and blaming management for their low rates. Part of our final was to be

a Process Assistant for a day. While on the PA for a day assignment, I heard

associates speak so ill of amazons’ best manager. The sortation department

had the same production rate for 5 years until the system was changed. The

new sort system did not require counting the items in a tote before sending it to

its destination like the old system did, therefore the sort rate was raised from

325 items per hour to 425. Associates no longer had extra time to socialize on

the floor, which they were not supposed to do to begin with. They did not want

to change the bad habits and as a result they were not making the required

daily or weekly rate. Trying to cut corners many associates did things that were

against standard work and safety rules. When my manager walked the floor to

give out positives, and write ups he was very careful. Positives were positive,
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but write ups could end up with a meeting in HR with a harassment complaint. If

one associate was corrected for not making rate there was technically no way

they could excuse themselves unless over 10% of the associates had the same

issue. If the correction involved unacceptable behavior, then the race card was

pulled. Suddenly, he was not the best manager but the enemy. The situation

was no longer about an associate violating safety standards or standard work

procedure but about a manager that “picked” on an associate that was part of a

minority group just because he does not like Hispanics.

Managers are not all-seeing. They do not know everything that happens

on the floor, but they have the duty to correct wrongful behavior especially if it

poses a possible liability issue. The associates’ most popular defense to a

correction was “such and such did the same thing and was not corrected

because he or she is white.” They did not take into account that the other

associate was rarely under the same managers visual scope and was another

managers’ associate. Managers are now stuck with having to choose their

battles when they are trying to do their jobs or run the risk of losing their jobs for

discrimination.

Affirmative action is a beast in its own league. It may have begun as a

corrective action but has indeed turned into preferential treatment that

developed into a really wrong version of reverse discrimination. The text on the

case of McAleer vs. AT&T proves it. It was unfair for McAleer to be denied the

position because of his sex or race. Many may argue he did not lose the

position but someone else was awarded with it instead; however, if he would
 Espinal V

have been a woman or part of any minority group, he would have gotten the

position. We may conclude then that he was in fact denied the position because

he was a Caucasian male. He was discriminated because of his race, and sex;

fruits of reverse discrimination at its best.

Bibliography
Julie C. Van Camp, Jeffrey Olen, Vincent Barry. Applying Ethics. Stamford: Cengage Learning,
2015. Book.