Legal Question in Discrimination Law in Minnesota

Re: back of the bus

Age, race, sex, gender, ethnicity, religion,

handicap are the usual groups to

which the antidiscrimination laws apply.

Economic "class" or job level is not one of those groups.

BUT BUT BUT if the maintenance staff is made up primarily of minorities or Italians

or Poles or Koreans or Vietnamese, then there might be a possibility of a suit.

For instance, a humungous hospital

has one job slot which became 98.9% "black"

because whites would not work for the low pay. Young black males had little choice but to take it if they wanted steady work.

When blacks became more upwardly mobile locally, the job slot began being filled by

newly arrived Hispanics, who, without

proficiency in English, were delighted to work at the job. Almost none of the blacks (except for a few black women)ever made it "out" of that job slot into a higher one. Their ranks simply shrunk by attrition.

If your maintenance staff resembles what I've

described, there might be a case.

Of course, you want to ask yourselves, is it worth it? Are we willing to be insulted in order to keep our jobs?

Lots of down-to-earth and practical questions have to be asked here.

Good luck.