by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: November 29, 2008   Last Updated: December 02, 2008

There is a great deal of hype and social pressure involved in the idea of diversity in the workforce. Unfortunately, many of the arguments are as disingenuous as the teen-ager who wants to stay out all night because "everybody's doing it". Examining the reasoning and background of diversity efforts reveals the ulterior motives for promoting a more diverse workforce-and the unspoken liabilities such slavish obedience to the concept creates:

First, workforce diversity was an offshoot of affirmative action. If affirmative action had been truly a society-driven concept where companies deliberately sought out a diverse workforce, it might have worked. Instead of allowing society to evolve to that point naturally, government yielded to pressure of special interest groups to enforce the concept under rule of law. Race and sex quotas are inherently unconstitutional, as government has no business making demands of private industry, particularly demands they are unwilling to fund.

Firms under government contract for any reason were especially subjected to pressure to hire a diverse workforce. In their haste to comply, many firms hired employees who were under-qualified, costing their shareholders and other workers a great deal. If corporations had taken the social demand of a diverse workforce seriously and attempted to hire minorities on the basis of skill, they would have had a far better chance of making it work. As it happened, many firms were so quickly bullied into hiring the unqualified that they are now stuck with unproductive employees who are a net loss to the bottom line. Then, to be able to terminate the under-qualified worker, they needed to employ a large number of the same race or sex in the same type of position-and document, document, document-to get rid of the non-performer. This usually results in other, high-performing non-minority employees losing their jobs.

A great many qualified minorities were hired under affirmative action: these people are an asset to the firm and it is about time they were no longer discriminated against by employers and allowed to contribute to society to the levels of their abilities. We must be grateful for the opportunities affirmative action created for minorities and, at the same time, see clearly what was wrong with the way this was implemented. The effects of this legislation created nearly thirty years of disruption in many of our employers' workforces, setting productivity back and opening the door further to the off-shoring

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