It"s time to repeal equal employment laws

First of all, I should like to make it clear that I am no bigot, and I am certainly no sexist or racist - indeed, I actually married a Slovakian girl. (I have since divorced her, but that wasn't anything to do with her gender-specific traits or her ethnicity, it was more to do with her never having my dinner ready on time and for not keeping the house clean and tidy, but in fairness to her, that wasn't really her fault - all Slovak women are lazy by nature). * Moving on to the debate, my opponent outlined the law, as it stands, and how it is used to defend the employment rights of various individuals who feel they are discriminated against, but he also acknowledged that, in practice, many employers hire the people they feel are most suitable for the given vacancy in spite of the regulations (and are sometimes punished for doing so). I agree that some people are at a disadvantage in the workplace through no fault of their own, but it is not the job of legislators to produce an equality of employment outcomes, rather it is to ensure there is an equality of opportunity. The way they do this is to fund high-quality education so students from private schools do not have a significant intellectual advantages over those who attended publicly-funded schools, and also to ensure youngsters from poorer backgrounds can access the best health care so that they are not unduly disadvantaged physically either. Nevertheless, certain governments still feel the need to interfere directly with the labour market. For example, next month the EU will debate a new law which will force all employers to ensure that at least 40% of the members of their supervisory boards (executive directors) are women. (1) Let's take a real life scenario to see how that would work in practice: I used to work for one of America's largest travel companies where I had responsibility for running the Groups and Incentive division in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). As one of the three senior managers based in the EMEA headquarters in London, all our duties included meeting clients and suppliers, running the office in the absence of any executive directors and travelling abroad to represent the Company. I had no problem with that, of course, but the other two senior managers were women with childcare issues. When problems occurred that required someone senior to come into the office early or leave late, it would always be me: they had to take their kids to school at a certain time in the morning and pick them up at a certain time in the afternoon. And if one of us had to attend some tedious trade fair or conference overseas, it would always be me that had to go because I didn't have any kids to look after. And when it came to having dinner with suppliers after work, again, it would have to be me that represented the company (a free meal is not worth spending your evening having your ears chewed off by some pushy salesmen, by the way). One year I even had to cancel my summer vacation at the last moment because one of my fellow manager's children was taken ill and she had to stay off work to look after it. None of this I minded too much, of course - I understood their circumstances - and the company duly recognised that I worked longer hours, took far fewer days off work, had a broader and deeper experience and a wider network of international contacts that my fellow managers - and this was reflected in my higher salary and annual bonus, so I would have have expected to be in pole position should a vacancy have become available on the Board of Directors. I wouldn't be best pleased, therefore, if my application was rejected simply because the Company had a quota to fill and had no legal option but to appoint one of my female colleagues instead. Now that really would have been sexual discrimination. To conclude, although I am a socialist, I live and work in a capitalist environment. I don't always like they way capitalism sometimes punishes the innocent and rewards the undeserving, but I have to accept it. What is not acceptable, however, is for government legislation to add to the injustices of capitalism by punishing diligent, hard-working people simply because they do not fit into a minority pigeon-hole, thus denying them legitmate job opportunities, or for employers to be forced to recruit second-rate candidates which will make their companies less competitive in the global marketplace, simply to comply with employment legislation. Thank you. (1) . http://www.nytimes.com... * If you are reading this, Tatiana, I am only joking!