The Department of Labor and the Department of Justice have ordered Arthur Grand Technologies, a tech staffing firm in Loudoun County, Virginia, to pay a fine and restitution to 31 people following an incident last year in which the company posted an absurdly racist job listing online. Each of the 31 complainants received $1000 in exchange for agreeing not to sue.
The open position was for a “business analyst” for “Salesforce and and insurance claims,” a job description I hope no one ever tries to explain to me. The ad read: “Only Born US Citizens [White] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates].” Clearly, the person who listed the claim was not paying attention to that last part. (Unless they were and they wanted the company to get caught.)
The listing, which was posted to Indeed by a recruiter in India, explained that whoever was hired “would serve two clients, HTC Global, an information technology company based in Troy, Michigan, and Berkshire Hathaway, the multinational holding company based in Omaha, Nebraska.”
The DOJ found, following an investigation, that Arthur Grand had violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, which bars employers from discriminating based on one’s ethnicity or immigration status (for those legally allowed to work in the country), while the Department of Labor said that the company violated a statute barring federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity.
“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. 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,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in an official statement. “The Justice Department, working with other government agencies, will continue to hold employers accountable when they violate our nation’s federal civil rights laws.”
“Over the past 58 years, OFCCP has protected workers and job seekers from workplace discrimination. We are committed to holding federal contractors accountable for outrageous discriminatory practices like this advertisement,” said acting director Michele Hodge of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). “Companies like Arthur Grand that accept federal contracts cannot have a ‘whites only’ hiring process.”
Really, no company should have a “whites only” hiring practice — although it’s worth noting that federally and in many states without their own laws, companies with 15 or fewer employees are allowed to discriminate.
CEO Sheik Rahmathullah said his company “vehemently denies any guilt or wrongdoing,” and blamed the posting on a “rogue staffer.” He also notes that 80 percent of the company’s staff are people of color, as are all of those who occupy senior leadership positions.
One has to wonder, given this, if it wasn’t one or both of the companies themselves that put this out in the first place. It’s hard to imagine that a recruiter, someone whose job it is to find candidates to fill positions, would come up with this on their own for this and only this posting.
The scary thing is — whoever requested this was stupid enough to get caught, but there are a whole lot of people out there who aren’t. People who will hire only white people without ever saying “We only hire white people.” How many times have people written similar memos and not been caught?
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