ANTHONY HAZELL: Poor education outcomes make equity gaps too large for companies to close
Redress should deal with the hard evidence about the actual obstacles that reduce chances in life
I have two major frustrations with the debate on employment equity and affirmative action. The first is in the conflation of targets and quotas. Those taking issue with the new regulations can be forgiven for conflating targets with quotas, because the regulations do the same thing.
To be clear, a quota is a number or percentage of posts at whatever level reserved for a particular category of employee; a target is the number or percentage of posts filled by a particular category you would like to achieve through consistent implementation of your employment equity plan. The former is a strict rule, with negative consequences for noncompliance; the latter is a monitoring and evaluation tool to evaluate the extent to which the strategy you have developed and implemented is achieving its desired outcome (namely, broader representation at all levels of employment)...
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