The foundational goal of civil rights legislation is to reduce discrimination, in both the public and private sector. To understand the levels of perceived discrimination in the federal government, this research note examines 9 years of data reported under the requirements of the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). From 2006 to 2014, less than 1% of federal employees filed discrimination complaints each year, and the discrimination complaint rate did not significantly change over the time period. Race, color, and national origin were the most frequently claimed discrimination bases. Approximately half of all complaints alleged retaliation after filing an initial discrimination claim. In addition, federal employees most frequently claimed that discrimination occurred in the context of nonsexual harassment. This research note describes other trends in discrimination claims and proposes directions for future research.
Since 1978, the government has been implementing programs to combat the underrepresentation of minorities in federal employment. However, representative bureaucracy literature has done little to examine the impact these initiatives are having on the workplace. This article examines the relationship between changes in representation and discrimination complaints. Increases in the ratio of minority and female employees predict an increase in the rates of race and sex-discrimination complaints, respectively. Increases in the ratio of Black/African American and Asian employees predict an increase in race-discrimination complaints. However, the ratio of employees ages 40 or above did not predict changes in age discrimination.
A critical comparison of the agency identifier codes in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) and FedScope data sets reveals three distinct types of issues will occur when researchers attempt to merge the data sets: (a) a single agency is assigned different codes across data sets; (b) a single code is assigned to different agencies across data sets; and (c) a single code is assigned to two or more agencies in the FEVS data set and a separate agency in the FedScope data set. Between 2013 and 2016, these issues are present in almost all major federal departments. Compatibility issues between the agency identifiers could cause the user to drop observations unnecessarily or unknowingly combine two different agencies’ data improperly. If uncorrected, these issues will distort the analysis of studies that rely on this combination of data. However, researchers can correct for this issue and still use Office of Personnel Management (OPM) identifiers to combine data across multiple data sets.
PurposeMany low-income students are unable to participate in internship programs because they lack financial resources to pay for the cost of housing and relocating to the internship site. This paper examines the types of benefits or supports related to housing and relocation that employers are providing to paid interns.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses content analysis to examine the types of supports included in job advertisements posted on Handshake, the largest early career networking platform in the US.FindingsDuring the period studied, less than 11% of internships advertised indicated that the employer was willing to provide housing or relocation support, only 107 employers across the US. Only 53 employers were willing to provide free company-sponsored housing. Internships offering support are clustered in the fields of business, engineering and research, providing almost no internships for students in other fields.Practical implicationsGiven the high cost of housing, if a student does not have access to considerable financial resources, they are unlikely to participate in an internship or will be limited to a position in their commutable area. To level the playing field among all students, employers need to offer free or subsidized company-sponsored housing to student interns. While some employers do offer support, the number of students needing support far exceeds the number of internships available.Originality/valueWhile there is information on what students identify as barriers, there is no accurate picture of employer supports available to mitigate these barriers. This exploratory analysis is the first to examine the benefits and supports employers are providing to paid interns.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.