Limitations on the corporate bank's liability
The legal action against the corporate bank is limited due to its indirect involvement in the EEO violation perpetrated by its lower level management.
The ability of the secondary defendant, the corporate bank, to prove that there was no corporate involvement in the discrimination in hiring which took place in the primary defendant's, Dave, employee selection will revolve around its lack of knowledge. As a branch manager, Dave had the ability and the duty to contact upper level management in the employment/recruiting division of the bank's human resources division once the situation was incurred. As no such communication took place, the corporate bank is not liable as a primary in the EEO violation. Corporate management faces limited liability in this case because it did not direct the action of its branch manager and is thus liable for negligence and not tort. Dave, however, is the party directly responsible for the EEO violation and assumes complete liability.
To prevent repeats of this episode, corporate management should develop management training that focuses on correctly following EEO. Human resources also ought to enact a policy that obligates branch managers to clear an employee selection prior to notifying applicants on the assignment of the position. Human resources programs put in place to develop lower management will limit the corporate bank's negligence in such situations.
Comments
Posted by: Sandy Piderit
Posted on: September 21, 2005 12:09 PM
I might buy your argument if the company has a written policy that states that job postings must be cleared with HR first, and that requires managers to participate in EEO training before conducting job interviews... then the company could penalize the manager who did not follow these policies, and might be able to argue that it did what it could to prevent discrimination.
In the absence of such written policies and training practices, though, the company is responsible for what its employees do as part of their work.