Over the past three decades, civil rights laws have made a major contribution to reducing employment discrimination in the workplace in the United States. Since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women and minorities have entered many previously all-white, all-male occupations and have made significant gains in employment levels and pay relative to white males. For example, the pay of white women working full time relative to that of their white male counterparts increased from 57.9 percent in 1965 to 71.3 in 1995. Similarly, the earnings of black males relative to white males increased in the same period from 62.8 to 72.8 per cent. While some of these changes might be the result of changes in general attitudes, mores, and social practices, it is clear that they are, in large part, attributable to the law.

Despite the success of civil rights efforts, discrimination still exists in the workplace, although it now often takes new forms. The diffused and decentralized authority structure of the new boundary less workplace can give rise to bias and favoritism that is more subtle than discrimination in internal labor markets. Women and minorities in formerly white male workplaces often encounter passive hostility and subtle harassment from coworkers as well as glass ceilings and other de facto barriers to advancement. The civil rights laws were designed to eliminate discrimination as it was manifest in the old employment relationship, and therefore may be less effective to redress new forms of discrimination. In particular, the new workplace practices described in Chapter 5 threaten both to make liability for discrimination more difficult to establish and to render many of the old remedies ineffective.