A Virginia-based tech company has to pay the price for a racist job post that it made on a public hiring website last year, which sparked outrage on social media.
The post was for a business analyst position at Arthur Grand Technologies that would work in the company’s sales and insurance claims team in Dallas, Texas. The job advertisement, which was made public on a hiring website in March 2023, restricted candidates based on their race.
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“Only US Born Citizens [white] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates],” read the job post in bolded text.
Now, the Department of Justice has announced in a press release that the company has to pay a $7,500 civil penalty for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act with the discriminatory job post after the department opened an investigation into the company in May last year.
Arthur Grand Technologies will have 60 days to create or revise policies that ban discrimination in its hiring and firing practices, and 90 days to train its recruiters on unfair immigration-related employment practices.
The company will also have to pay $31,000 in compensation to individuals who were discriminated against by the job posting.
“It is shameful that in the 21st century, we continue to see employers using ‘whites only’ and ‘only US born’ job postings to lock out otherwise eligible job candidates of color,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke in the press release. “I share the public’s outrage at Arthur Grand’s appalling and discriminatory ban on job candidates based on citizenship status, national origin, color and race.”
While speaking to CNN in a new report, Arthur Grand Technologies CEO Sheik Rahmathullah said that the company “denies any guilt or wrongdoing” regarding the job posting that was made public in March last year. He also claimed that the posting was "unauthorized" and was made by a disgruntled employee.
“This unauthorized posting was made by an upset employee on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) from their personal email address and account,” said Rahmathullah in a statement to CNN. “Upon discovering this, we took immediate and decisive action to ensure that this type of incident will never happen again, including the immediate termination of the responsible employee.”
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Discrimination in the workplace is still a major problem across many organizations in the U.S., despite vows from many companies in 2020 to be more inclusive following nationwide Black Lives Matter protests.
According to a recent poll by job recruiting website Monster, 91% of workers said they have experienced discrimination in the workplace, and 77% said they have witnessed an act of discrimination at work.
The survey also found that 50% of workers said they’ve experienced age discrimination in the job application process, and 40% experienced discrimination in the job application process based on race.
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