Think back to your last job interview. You were probably asked the standard questions: certifications, professional experience, references, ethnicity, religion.
What’s that? You weren’t asked where you were born, where your parents were born, what religion you are and whether or not you are a Muslim?
Then your name must not be Sukdev Singh Dhaliwal.
Dhaliwal is a Sikh who won $24,000 in damages from Bally Total Fitness when a California judge ruled that the company denied him a job in 2004 on religious and ethnic grounds. He was born and raised in California, but, during the interview, Dhaliwal was asked about his religious and ethnic background, and later denied the job.
According to Wikipedia, a Sikh can be recognized by his turban or beard, or by a steel bracelet on the wrist. That, apparently, was enough to raise a red flag for Bally management, and enough to cause them to ignore this country’s most basic employment rights.
Bally Total Fitness needs to worry about more than its bottom line if its management can look at a man wearing a turban, notice the color of his skin, struggle with the pronunciation of his name – then decide that, based on these factors alone, he is not a candidate for employment.
Is Bally's alone in its discriminatory hiring practices, or is this issue more wide-spread in our industry? If this story shocks you (and especially if it doesn’t), it might be time to look at your own facility’s hiring process and guidelines. Do they follow the law?
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