Author Topic: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?  (Read 43662 times)

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Offline moz

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #50 on: May 24, 2017, 11:15:10 pm »
Education is in theory objective but that will mean self trained or taught individuals will likely lose out consistently to those with formal degrees.

As often it's more that hiring people is a huge PITA and a big risk for the people doing the hiring. Nothing quite makes quick and dirty filtering as attractive as having 500 emails come in applying for a job and having to sort through them. So "do they have a degree" is an easy filter that's also easy to justify to HR/upper management. And after the first hundred or so "I Sergei from Kladistavinkuvoluvbistan excellent english much degree need visa sponsor" even the most devout "we consider all applications" management starts to look for clues that will allow them to weed out obvious duds quickly and easily.

Having been through that wringer a few times I have taking to putting a question in the ad that must be answered in the cover letter, and an instruction likewise. For example "please address your application to Moz and mention your two most recently used programming languages". That weeds out spammers and people who don't follow instructions (I don't care which category a given failure falls into). So my filter goes like this, and many candidates fail at each step:

  • does the cover letter exist, ideally as the body of the email
  • is it addressed to me?
  • does it answer the question?
  • can I understand the letter at all? (I'm happy with ESOL as long as I can read it)

After that I will actually open the CV/Resume, because by then we're normally down to less that 1/10th the initial pile of applications. A degree is nice, but relevant experience matters more unless we're hiring a graduate. Someone with two years experience is probably on an equal footing with a recent graduate, except that I will grill them a little more on theory because IME non-grads are often weak on *why* we do things.

Why do you think Dave only considers people who are active on the forums for his apprentices?
 

Offline moz

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #51 on: May 24, 2017, 11:17:35 pm »
the SJWs will
No, they usually argue for and want equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.

{citation needed}

Would one of you do me a wee favour - show me where that argument has been made in good faith?
 
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Offline LaserSteve

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #52 on: May 25, 2017, 06:10:54 pm »
I went to school with a lovely, older, married lady.  The kind of women who could be mothering and supportive to a bunch of undergrads, yet flip around and be tough as nails.  This was in the early 90s.   She  majored in EE, got three years done,  into the four year program, then they scheduled the eye  test for 2nd semester juniors.   She was  was found to have mild color blindness when the school paid a company to administered the test.  Think really major university.

Their Idea was not to waste testing money on students who might wash out. 

She had to switch over to mechanical, no ifs ands or buts, because of thru hole color codes.   Her revenge was to go see a vision  specialist, who suggested a mild red contact lens on one eye. She had already been stuffing boards for her husband's business, with never a flaw. 

So she put on the contact  lens, hand stuffed and soldered  a three foot by three foot machine control board, and walked into the Dean's office.  It of course was perfectly functional, and had around two hundred banded resistors on it.   Dean said that's nice, and NO.  She slammed it on his desk and went to lawyer.  Net result, she finished,  got both ME and EE by the time the lawsuit was over. 

The law in the state of Ohio said you could discriminate for this at the time, as a condition of employment. But nothing said you could delay the  test, and then not inform students you will be testing! The Dean's mistake, she was a teacher by training and knew the anti-discrimination law.

Ouch!

Steve



« Last Edit: May 25, 2017, 06:12:32 pm by LaserSteve »
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #53 on: May 26, 2017, 12:23:34 am »
Writing a requirement to be able to carry a 180 lb person 50 yards might result from the first situation.  A requirement to fit through a specified small hole might result from the second.  The combination would result in an extraordinarily small pool of firefighters.

And the only place you'd manage to recruit them was in bar fights in Scotland and they'd all be called Wee Angus, Wee Shuggy, Wee Lewis..., you get the picture. If you ever enter a bar and there's a really short, thin, wiry Scotsman sitting on their own at the end of the bar giving everyone who walks in the eye, for the sake of your health, leave. The stories I could tell ...
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #54 on: May 26, 2017, 12:27:02 am »
Is there a fashion equivalent of a 3458A to make sure the bust is 85.00000cm?

My mate Pete Long used to say that the correct unit for that measurement was the British Standard Handfull.
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Offline Richard Crowley

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #55 on: May 26, 2017, 12:36:00 am »
Quote
Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
Do candidates have the right to be hired for a job they are unable to perform?
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #56 on: May 26, 2017, 02:15:34 am »
Had an electrician wire up a panel for me. Found out he is colour-blind:

He swapped red and green wires.

Meaning, incoming 480VAC 100A phase A connected to chassis ground, and earth ground went to Phase A output. Totally hazardous. Assuming another GND connection to the panel existed and could clear the 100A circuit-breaker, still would damage things.

After that, I believe they have no place working where their disability causes safety hazards.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #57 on: May 26, 2017, 02:44:07 am »
Why do you think Dave only considers people who are active on the forums for his apprentices?

David2 isn't on the forum, nor does he frequent any other forums.
 

Offline N2IXK

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #58 on: May 26, 2017, 02:55:17 pm »
Had an electrician wire up a panel for me. Found out he is colour-blind:

He swapped red and green wires.

You guys use red on a 480V system up in Canada? Standard colors here are Brown, Orange and Yellow for the hot legs, with Grey for a neutral. Black, Red, and Blue with a White neutral would be seen on a 208 or 240V 3 phase system in the US.
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Offline floobydust

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #59 on: May 26, 2017, 10:59:13 pm »
Yes, Canadian wire colour codes the same as USA. 3-phase feeds usually red,black,blue. Neutral is white, ground is green.
I thought brown, yellow, orange are European colours. I can't buy that cable here.
 

Offline FireFlower

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #60 on: May 28, 2017, 10:06:16 pm »
Yes, Canadian wire colour codes the same as USA. 3-phase feeds usually red,black,blue. Neutral is white, ground is green.
I thought brown, yellow, orange are European colours. I can't buy that cable here.

Old 'somewhat  Euro standard' colors for 3-phase:
Black (P1), Brown (P2), Black-White/Pure White (P3), Blue (Neutral), Green-Yellow (Ground)

New european colors for 3 phase since 2001
Brown (P1),  Black (P2), Grey (P3), Blue (Neutral), Green-Yellow (Ground)


Also my friend is color blind (red-green if I remember right) and he constantly was discriminated when he mentioned it thus he was often sent to do "packing". What he was supposed to do before he mentioned his disability? He was supposed to write code...  :palm:

The problem is word "color blind" covers all cases for color disabilities, even the minor ones. From complete black&white sight to someone who sees regular blue as more darker blue or light blue.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2017, 10:13:32 pm by FireFlower »
 

Offline ivaylo

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #61 on: May 29, 2017, 03:51:37 pm »
Is anybody reading this from the former Soviet republics? A friend who lived there in the early 90s told me that job ads would include sex with the boss...
Not from the republics, but from the Bloc. The 90s were wild there, but don't remember seeing such ads. Growing up in Communist Eastern Europe color blindness was a curse. You couldn't drive, couldn't study Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, nothing with electricity, or even some Arts. Of course the military had their crazy rules. I am red-green "confused", and everything was a struggle that way. I was allowed to drive (only passenger cars, could never drive anything bigger) only after a battery of tests in a specialized Transportation Hospital. Now that rule is relaxed, I believe. I could only study CS, because there was a loophole in the rules such that people drafted in the army did not have to take a medical exam before applying to college (and didn't have to show the results either). Fun times... The California driving test/exam was such a relief.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #62 on: May 29, 2017, 06:00:53 pm »
Yes, my friend told me all sorts of stories about how the so called "New Russians" were abusing society. It seems that in the rush to "privatize" well connected former bureaucrats made a killing buying up all the former state owned companies for a tiny fraction of what they were worth before anybody realized what was going on. Turning them all into very rich men, and leaving the people with nothing.  Their counterparts in Europe and the US were very envious.

As she explained it, the gangsters were buying up apartments by offering people (who had an apartment in a major city) viatical settlements that gave people the rights to live in their apartments "for the rest of their lives", in exchange for small stipends of money to live on. - and the gangsters would own the apartment and assume possession when they had died (whether naturally or not).

Once they had signed, then those people would often end up dead not long afterward.

As far as sex with the boss, the way she put it, certain kinds of jobs were more often prostitution than not, and this was widely known and tolerated because otherwise huge segments of the population would have no income at all.

The way they would put it in the ads was something like "no hangups" ... that was a code phrase for sex with the boss. The ads would specify the desired body type, age (typically had to be in 20s) and expressions like"no hangups".

Also, she said real jobs were in such short supply that almost nobody had any hope of getting one, everybody wanted to get out of the country, and if your family was not on the inside - rich oligarchs, the only job alternative for many was gangsterism (ie being a New Russian) or prostitution if you were a girl.  Also, "computers" which meant computer crime. Rarely programming.

(Also, human trafficking was common.) 

The New Russians were famous for their boorishness, willingness to waste huge amounts of money on status symbols,  and bad taste.

Sounds really hellish.

------

So, I was curious when this was brought up in an earlier post, have any of the people here with color blindness tried the suggestion in an earlier post, wearing one contact lens that was presumably tinted red?

Or, for that matter, anaglyph lenses used for monochromatic stereo vision?
« Last Edit: May 29, 2017, 06:25:42 pm by cdev »
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Offline floobydust

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #63 on: May 31, 2017, 02:47:52 am »
The electric power generation/utility industry in North America uses reversed colour codes for HMI screens and annunciators lamps etc.  including the nuclear power industry.
So RED=OK, GREEN=ALARM/TROUBLE.

I wonder if this would get mixed up?
One colour-blind guy says he knows where red/green are on a traffic light as his way to not mix things up. Red at the top.
 

Offline Jeroen3

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #64 on: May 31, 2017, 05:31:03 am »
So RED=OK, GREEN=ALARM/TROUBLE.
Oh god why  :palm:, IEC 60073 people!
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #65 on: May 31, 2017, 05:53:26 am »
Complained about it and my boss told me "Green means it's OK for you to investigate; to put your finger on it (button). Red: stop from doing anything."
 

Offline retrolefty

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #66 on: May 31, 2017, 11:20:50 am »
The electric power generation/utility industry in North America uses reversed colour codes for HMI screens and annunciators lamps etc.  including the nuclear power industry.
So RED=OK, GREEN=ALARM/TROUBLE.

I wonder if this would get mixed up?
One colour-blind guy says he knows where red/green are on a traffic light as his way to not mix things up. Red at the top.

 I was always puzzled about the red/green logic used by the electrical group including their electrical engineering department in a U.S. refinery. They explained the lights or colored mechanical flags were for the safety of the electricians. Red meant the breaker was energized and closed so unsafe to try and open for service. Green meant they could go ahead and safety open and service or inspect the breaker's internal. They explained it's been an electrical standard forever and would not consider changing it after all the years.

 But this was only used on electrical breakers and switch gear. We used the more logical red= trouble in our DCS screens and annunciator panels.

« Last Edit: May 31, 2017, 11:23:25 am by retrolefty »
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #67 on: May 31, 2017, 06:48:58 pm »
We used the more logical red= trouble in our DCS screens and annunciator panels.

Not "more logical", just conventional. There is no inherent reason that red means danger, just convention.
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #68 on: June 01, 2017, 01:00:02 am »
We used the more logical red= trouble in our DCS screens and annunciator panels.

Not "more logical", just conventional. There is no inherent reason that red means danger, just convention.

It is a very widespread and aged convention.  I don't know when it started but it is definitely at least a century old.  And quite common in all European influenced cultures.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #69 on: June 01, 2017, 01:02:29 pm »
We used the more logical red= trouble in our DCS screens and annunciator panels.

Not "more logical", just conventional. There is no inherent reason that red means danger, just convention.

It is a very widespread and aged convention.  I don't know when it started but it is definitely at least a century old.  And quite common in all European influenced cultures.

My beef, if I have one, is the conflation of 'logical' and 'customary'. Just as I tend to interject when someone says something is "more intuitive" when what they really mean is "more like I'm used to". My discomfort is at the use of woolly language or woolly thinking, not the perfectly reasonable suggestion that one should use indicator colours that 90% of the world immediately understand.
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #70 on: June 01, 2017, 01:36:08 pm »
We used the more logical red= trouble in our DCS screens and annunciator panels.

Not "more logical", just conventional. There is no inherent reason that red means danger, just convention.

It is a very widespread and aged convention.  I don't know when it started but it is definitely at least a century old.  And quite common in all European influenced cultures.

My beef, if I have one, is the conflation of 'logical' and 'customary'. Just as I tend to interject when someone says something is "more intuitive" when what they really mean is "more like I'm used to". My discomfort is at the use of woolly language or woolly thinking, not the perfectly reasonable suggestion that one should use indicator colours that 90% of the world immediately understand.

Great thinking points here.  Shows how easy it is to get lost.

You start with a very widespread convention.  Red is danger.

Electrical workers want identify potentially hot circuits.  The logic is to use the widely used convention - red is danger.

Then a different logic is used to in electrical power industry to color code annunciators - the logic of the switch state.

Which totally circumvents the original intent of keeping a widely used convention associating red with danger.

It is logical to use an existing and widely accepted convention to convey information.  Saves lots of training time and reduces the chances of confusion and error in actual operation.
 

Offline JacobPilsen

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #71 on: June 01, 2017, 03:59:28 pm »
IMHO:
Red = Blood
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #72 on: June 01, 2017, 04:12:59 pm »
IMHO:
Red = Blood

Or is that: Red = ripe, juicy fruit just ready to eat; green = sour, unripe fruit that will give you the squits?

Or, green = highly poisonous:


Anyway, you tend to see the blood after the danger has happened to you, not before as warning.
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Online Berni

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #73 on: June 05, 2017, 05:43:43 am »
Well Altium Designer uses green to show you errors on your PCB. I always found it counter intuitive but there id guess it comes from using red and blue for the top and bottom copper layers so green is the one that stands out the most from those.

Also looking at a screen flood filled with that bright neon green color is probably not nice on your eyes for long periods so that's one reason to not use it for a copper layer.

The reason for the red color is that humans evolved to pay more attention to red/yellow things. Green color is everywhere in nature while red things are usually more significant. A lot of fruit has some form of red color to it so want to notice it, its useful to notice if you are bleeding, blood on objects could alert you that something bad happened there. Very few things are red in nature for no reason, while all other colors appear everywhere.
 

Offline pinkman

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Re: Do employers have a right to discriminate against color-blindness?
« Reply #74 on: January 22, 2018, 06:32:10 am »
The answer to this question is obvious.  If the job depends at all on being able to correctly recognize colors, then the rejection of anyone who cannot is compulsory.  Would you hire a man with one arm to dig a hole?  A law against this would simply be a formality, created to appease the loudest of those who are mentally incapable of handling reality due to emotional or other shortcomings.  These laws are easy to step around but the unfortunate reality is that those less experienced at stepping around this nonsense are left at a disadvantage and the end result is that those least deserving of being sued(i.e. small business, can't afford good lawyer) are destroyed by it and those most deserving are unscathed.  Best course of action would be to do away with such laws completely.  I reserve the right to not hire any person for any possible reason, including their choice in coffee.
 


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