Read the article in Chapter 9 titled Bad Driving Stereotypes Hurt Women and Employers on page 260. Once you are done reading the article, post responses to the following:
1. Speculate about the manner in which male drivers may have treated the lone women, who ultimately quit PFG. How likely is it that she was helped or trained?
2. The CEO of PFG used one (or several) bad experiences with women drivers as rationale to avoid hiring any other women driver. Of the 44 men hired, is it likely that some of them were unsuccessful too? If so, why were different standards applied to male and female failures?
3. Suppose you were the new HR manager brought into PFG to clean up this concern. What are three things that you would put in place to help the company get on track?
Bad Driving Stereotypes Hurt Women and Employers Performance Food Group (PFG), a food service distributor in the Baltimore–Washington area, refused to hire women as delivery drivers. One year, PFG hired forty-four men and one woman as drivers. The company’s transportation manager told the lone woman driver that her performance would determine whether any other women would be hired as drivers. Unfortunately for all future women who hoped to be drivers at PFG, the woman had difficulties and quit. Later that same month, another woman (who would ultimately become the “charging party”) saw PFG’s advertised vacancy seeking delivery drivers and applied for the position. Although she had a commercial driver’s license, prior delivery experience, and met all posted criteria for the job, the charging party (CP) was told that PFG would not be hiring any women because of a past bad experience with a female driver. The manager instead offered CP a lower paying warehouse position, which she declined and 1nstead took her case to the EEOC.
During the investigation of the case, an e-mail corroborating the company’s position about not hiring women drivers surfaced. Thee-mail, from the company’s president and addressed to the transportation manager and HR manager, stated that “I think we have experience that tells us female drivers will not work out.” The president concluded that making offers to women as drivers was “inappropriate. “During the course of the lawsuit, PFG extended unconditional job offers to the CP and six other women applicants. PFG also agreed to develop defined, uniform, and objective job-related qualifications for the driver and helper positions and to implement consistent job application, recordkeeping, and record retention procedures. The company agreed to affirmatively recruit qualified females for driver and helper positions and paid $350,000 in damages to seven class members. In a very similar case, Ameripride Services, a linen supply company with nearly 200 facilities in the United States and Canada, discriminated against women applicants for customer service representative/route sales driver positions in Idaho. Ameripride’s advertisements stated that a Class B commercial license was required.
