Visible Minorities Equity
The Employment Equity Act defines Visible minorities as: other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour. The main groups of visible minorities consist of : Chinese, South Asian, Black, Arab, West Asian, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Latin American, Japanese and Korean. President Kennedy in 1961, issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination among federally regulated contractors. Requiring employee to develop affirmative action plans, including goals and timetables to correct the underrepresentation of minorities.
Overseas degrees are not recognized by Canadian employers. Recent immigrants are visible minorities, facing difficulty of finding a job with their unrecognized degree. Immigration is a federal responsibility and employment, education, and health come under provincial jurisdiction. Professional organizations are licensed by provincial governments and often keep recent immigrants out of these professions. Continuation of discrimination against visible minorities still continues to occur under the Employment Equity Act. Visible minorities are restricted to certain work statuses and are unable to achieve certain positions. Public services have shown discriminatory practices towards visible minorities
Larger companies have higher levels of employment equity attainment. Large size companies have organizational visibility and the availability of greater resources to achieve Employment Equity Act objectives. In the industrial sector under the Employment Equity Act, banking sectors have achieved the highest level of equity. The visibility of banks has minimal competitive pressures similar to experience in the communications and transportation sectors. Visible minorities are less discriminated according to different industrial sectors. Provinces across Canada showed different visible minorities discriminations, in terms of Employment Equity Act attainment is Ontario and British Columbia. The two provinces with a history and recent large numbers of immigrants attended the lowest level of Employment Equity Act attainment, there is a disproportionate number of individuals whose foreign credentials and experience are not recognized by employers in Canada. Generally, populations of visible minorities in many provinces are very small, companies need to engage limited efforts to achieve reasonable attainments for the Employment Equity Act. Visible minorities are disadvantaged in management, professional, and sales positions, as well as skilled manual jobs.
Language, communication and tradition are additional barriers to the discrimination of visible minorities. Immigrants of visible minority have many discrimination of a combination of stereotypes and assumptions (e.g. “are all thieves” “smell funny” “talk funny”). Stereotypes and assumptions provided restrictive roles for employment. Many believe Visible minority communities are very traditional, and are immune to the changes that are happening in "Western" societies.
Representation of visible minorities under federally regulated private sector showed an increase. In 1987 5% of visible minorities are represented increased to 15.9% in 2007. To improve and support discrimination of visible minorities the following is needed:
1)Increased enforcement of the Employment Equity Act
2)More focus on occupational inequalities (There seems to be a “glass ceiling” access to middle and senior management positions)
3)More Focus on Sectorial Differences
4)More Focus on company and employment group size(visible minorities are Underrepresented in smaller firms
Read more about this topic: Employment Equity (Canada)
Famous quotes containing the words visible, minorities and/or equity:
“And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“If equity and human natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)