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The Law:
Affirmative Action (EEO)
Act 1986
Equal Employment Opportunity
These days, many employers call themselves Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employers. They may have an employee called an EEO Officer to oversee EEO in their workplace, or they may simply ensure that their human resources or personnel manager, and/or other line managers, understand and follow EEO. Their job advertisements may say that they want people who understand and will follow EEO principles.
Employers and others are likely to mean one of two things when they use the term EEO. The two meanings of EEO are:
sometimes it means that the employer follows the anti-discrimination laws and tries to ensure that everyone in their workplace understands these laws and follows them too.
other times it means that as well as following anti-discrimination laws, the employer also prepares and implements specific equal employment opportunity management plans and/or programs designed to ensure that all really do get equal opportunity in the workplace. For example, they may work out ways of identifying and then removing any barriers that certain groups have been facing in achieving real equal opportunity in their workplace. They may keep statistics on the proportions of different groups at different levels in their workplace/management hierarchy to help them monitor how EEO is or isn't working. In effect, this sort of planning provides a more structured and foolproof way of ensuring that the employer does not - even unwittingly - break the anti-discrimination laws.
In fact, the law says that all New South Wales and Commonwealth public sector organisations (including government departments and authorities, New South Wales health authorities and hospitals and New South Wales universities), and all New South Wales local councils, must prepare such equal employment opportunity plans. This is required under Part IXA of the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Act 1977, the Commonwealth Public Service Reform Act 1984, the Equal Employment Opportunity (Commonwealth Authorities) Act 1987, and the New South Wales Local Government Act 1993 respectively. They must also pay particular attention to certain groups known to have been disadvantaged in the past. These groups are women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people of non-English speaking background and people with disabilities. In the New South Wales public sector, these plans are co-ordinated by the New South Wales Office of the Director of Equal Opportunity in Public Employment.
In many, cases, these equal employment opportunity plans - whether prepared in the public or private sector - include what many people understand to be 'affirmative action strategies'.
Affirmative Action
People generally use the term affirmative action in one of three ways:
to cover everything to do with the development of equal opportunity plans - as described above.
to describe specific affirmative action strategies - that is, strategies that provide special help for groups who have been disadvantaged in the past. For example, the employer may run special training or recruitment programs for groups such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women or migrants of non-English speaking background. Affirmative action strategies like this help give previously disadvantaged groups the skills and confidence to allow them to compete on equal terms with everyone else. This helps ensure that equal opportunity becomes a reality for everyone. It also helps ensure that employers get the best out of all groups in their workplace. Note that in order to conduct these types of affirmative action strategies in New South Wales employers generally first need to get their program certified.
to cover programs and strategies aimed at women only. The law says that all employers with 100 or more employees, and all higher education institutions, must develop and implement an 'affirmative action program' to promote equal opportunity for women and report on this program annually to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace, a federal government body. This is required under the Commonwealth Affirmative Action (Equal Opportunity for Women) Act 1986. In essence, an affirmative action program is a structured approach to ensuring that women are able to compete equally for employment, training and promotional opportunities, and that any disadvantages are addressed. An affirmative action program involves keeping statistics on the occupations and employment status of women in the organisation, and using these to redress the imbalances in the profile of the workforce. It also involves implementing specific affirmative action strategies including training or recruitment programs for women, introducing part-time work for women returning from maternity leave and reviewing promotion procedures to ensure all promotions are made solely on the basis of merit.
