This section (3-B-8) puts you in a Supply Management leader's role and asks you to think about issues of discrimination and harassment of co-workers. The important thing is that here you are not thinking about Supplier Diversity which is covered elsewhere in Exam 1 (1-F-3, 1-E-2, 1-D-1) and Exam 2 (2-D-3). Keep in mind that section 3-A-13 introduces the concept of diversity in the workplace but this particular segment of Exam 3 i.e. 3 B is about compliance - viz . if you are the CPO or Chief Supply Officer are you compliant with laws and rules pertaining to discrimination and harassment?
The laws can be US ones like:
- Equal Pay Act of 1963 which asks you to ensure that for the same work using the same skills you should be paying the same. For example, there was the class action lawsuit by women employees of Walmart followed by individual lawsuits. Could this have been prevented early on by better leadership ?
- Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 particularly Title VII prevents discrimination against employees on the basis of race,religion,color,sex or national origin.
- Executive order 11246 of 1965 prevents employment discrimination if you are a federal contractor.
- Age Discrimination 1967 This one is strange because all of us will be old - one day. However, the relatively younger colleagues tend to be more technically competent and older colleagues get discriminated. Perhaps training older workers is away to prevent this kind of discrimination.
- Equal Employment Opportunity Act (EEOA 1972) is something you see in job ads. The purpose is to have an employee mix that reflects the community population mix. And the EEO Commission can directly file lawsuits against organizations that violate EEO.
- National Labor Relations Act or Collective Bargaining or Taft-Hartley allows individuals to organize and bargain effectively.
- OSHA is also featured in this section. Again the logic is are you compliant with OSHA in the supply management departmet?
- Americans With Disabilities Act prevents discrimination in employment for disabled candidates.
- Although USERRA is not mentioned in the study guide it's a good idea to become familiar with the need to hire qualified veterans into supply management positions.
Sexual harassment and diversity training are other important topics in this section. In general, you would have had your HR folks arrange training on these topics. Its a great idea to sign up- particularly for the online training in these topics. Apart from acing this section in the CPSM - you'll find that you'll learn nuances about what type of behaviors are appropriate and what are not, given the increasing complexity in this topic in the modern workplace.
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