Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and seniority systems under Title VII

¶ … seniority has received an increased attention in labor negotiations in the last year. The first reason is that both sides of the negotiation process have understood and accepted the justice behind the idea of seniority, so both sides have accepted to pay increasing attention to it. The second reason is that seniority is an objective criterion. It is sometimes difficult to identify an objective criterion to differentiate, and seniority offers this: it is always easy to determine the most senior individual in a group or in an organization.

The third reason is that several employee benefit programs are centered around the idea of seniority, including, for example, the proportional amount of vacation days to the number of years spent in the company. The fourth reason is that the alternative to seniority-based evaluation and reward is the reward based on work performance and ability. Sometimes, this is a very complicated process, with uncertain results. Finally, the fifth reason is that seniority is a strong motivator for employees and encourages them to stay longer with the company.

There are three major systems used where an employee acquires and applies seniority credits: employerwide, departmental/occupational and a combination between the two. The employerwide system takes into consideration the time that the employee has spent with the company. It does not reflect, in any way, the employee's movement within the organization, namely changes from department to department etc.

There are several advantages with this system. First of all, it encourages mobility within the organization. The system is more dynamic and allows the employee to move from department to department. It also encourages the employee to assume new responsibilities, to become more versatile etc. At the same time, it gives the employee more opportunities to perform new and more interesting tasks, thus limiting the possibility that he or she may, at some point, become bored with his tasks and move to another organization.

The departmental system takes into consideration the time that the employee spends in each department and awards benefits based on seniority only within certain departments. There are certain advantages with this system as well. It lowers the chances of large scale displacement of workers and is easier to handle, from an administrative point-of-view.