Main Street

Obama Shines Light On Employment Discrimination

Whenever the President of the United States talks about a certain issue, even briefly on a radio show, it automatically shines a big spotlight on it. That’s why we’re tipping our hat to Barack Obama, who mentioned ending discrimination against the unemployed as part of a broader effort to get Americans back to work.

On Tom Joyner’s radio show, President Obama brought up problem of employment discrimination during a discussion of the jobs crisis:

SYBIL WILKES: Could you talk — I’m sorry, Mr. President. Could you talk about the long-term unemployment? Because is there going to be something to do with people who are saying that — employers are saying the law — if you’re unemployed, we don’t want to hear from you. And these are people that are saying that they’re not getting the looks that they need to get from employers regarding possible jobs.

OBAMA: Well, there is no doubt that folks who have been unemployed longer than six months have a tougher time getting back into the job market. Now, the single most important thing we can do is just have the economy strong so that employers aren’t as choosy because they’ve got to hire because their businesses are expanding.

But we have seen instances in which employers are explicitly saying we don’t want to take a look at folks who’ve been unemployed. Well, that makes absolutely no sense, and I know there’s legislation that I’m supportive of that says you cannot discriminate against folks because they’ve been unemployed, particularly when you’ve seen so many folks who, through no fault of their own, ended up being laid off because of the difficulty of this recession.

The legislation he mentions is the Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011, which was introduced in the House by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and in the Senate by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). According to Blumenthal, “This bill will explicitly prohibit employers from engaging in discriminatory hiring and ensure that unemployed job seekers receive fair consideration for job openings.”

Even though the President raised the profile of the bill, the disgusting practice of discrimination against the unemployed continues – and businesses are already resisting reform efforts. Our friends at USAction launched a petition against Monster.com and CareerBuilder to ask them to stop running the discriminatory job postings on their popular sites. In a bizarre move, Monster.com refused, and responded by issuing a Cease and Desist order to USAction. When pressed, they punted responsibility for the postings onto the employers themselves.

Want to keep the pressure on Monster.com and end the discrimination? If you’re on Twitter, you can join @WorkingAmerica by signing this Act.ly petition.