THE CONCEPT FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR EMPLOYMENT, AFFIRMATIVE MEASURES AND "POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION" IN THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Authors: Vitanski Dejan 
Published: December 2021

The selection of people, their deployment of appropriate jobs and the determination of their duties and powers in the work process constitute a human resources policy, which essence is summarized in the gesture: ,,The right man in the right place". Human resources policy involves a set of activities that should ensure that the right people are in the right place at the right time, in order to carry out the planned activities and projects, through which the body will achieve its strategic goals. Individualism and equality make up the heart of decisions about who will be employed and what kind of process will effect this employment. The valuable premises of individualism encourage the establishment of a competitive recruitment process, which is thought out in order to recruit the person that is most qualified for the given position. The concept of equality, on the other hand, requires human resources policies to provide equal opportunities and access to employment in institutions for all relevant groups in society. The concept of equal opportunities in employment has a political, cultural and emotional substrate and an acronym. It is a set of procedures and practices that effectively protect a person from being excluded from employment because of its race, color, gender, religion, age, national origin or other factors that should not legally be considered in the selection of candidates. At the heart of discrimination, there is intolerance in the workplace towards those who are different. In employment, it manifests itself in failure, equals to be treated equally. Discrimination is an unequal treatment of the equal and equal treatment of the unequal. Whether it is deliberate or unintentional, any action that has the effect of restricting employment opportunities and advancing on account of one's gender, race, color, age, national origin, religion, physical disability, etc., constitutes discrimination and is illegitimate. In labor, the attributes and immanent features of the principle of equality in employment in the public administration are diligently and extensively processed, as a universally established and well-established principle in the national legislation and in the administrative architecture of almost all countries. However, the focus of the scientific research interests of the author includes the so-called affirmative measures and ,,positive discrimination" in employment. The intent of the affirmative measures is to encourage employers to engage a particular target group of people based on their race, gender, or their national origin, in order to reverse or neutralize the consequences of discrimination in the past. Comparatively, affirmative measures encourage dysonant explications, and they are subject to many litigation and constant political and social debate. For years, inequality in the treatment of individuals of different backgrounds is a crucial problem. And today, the concept of equal employment opportunities is in the focus of the theoreticians and the human resources departments. However, it should be emphasized that there is no universal recipe or ,,panacea" as to reach the best practice for equal employment opportunities.