Research Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Research Assignment - Essay Example The Voting Rights Act 1965 was considered as one of the landmark legislations in the history of United States to ensure that there exists no voting discrimination. This act specifically prohibits local governments as well as States not to impose any qualifications on the voting rights of the citizens despite the fact that voting has not been specifically defined as a right under the Constitution of the country. Through Section 4 and 5 it implemented an effective check over the States to get preclearance from the Federal government if States were required to bring any change in the voting laws. Supreme Court of the Country however, recently termed section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act 1965 as unconstitutional while not striking down Section 5 of the Act. This decision however, has created a strong debate on the voting discrimination and the how it may affect the overall voting rights of the citizens. Issues like voter IDs have resurfaced and are considered as discriminatory in nature. The Voting Rights Act 1965 and Discriminatory Voting The Voting Rights Act 1965 is considered as one of the landmark legislations in the history of United States of America. ... bsequent legislations after the 15th Amendment were directed at ensuring that States comply with the constitutional requirement however, after reconstruction, Federal government failed to however, effectively implement all the provisions and resultantly States enacted various laws and regulations which restrained the voting rights of the individuals. Section 4 and 5 of VRA put in place a formula based upon which States as well as local bodies were required to obtain preclearance from the Federal government regarding changes in the voting as well as voting legislations. This formula was decided based upon the historical facts and observations regarding the behavior of States and local bodies involved in the discretionary voting practices. Section 4 and 5 were therefore considered as important provisions which gave powers to the Federal Government to put restrictions on the local bodies as well as States not to engage in any discriminatory practices. Supreme Court Decision, Voter IDs a nd Discrimination Prior to the decision of Supreme Court, there were incidences where local bodies as well as States were clearly indulged into making changes in the laws to encourage discrimination during the voting. In 2010, Georgia passed a bill to reschedule the elections after it was revealed during the census that the blacks have become majority in certain areas.1 Though the change only affected Richmond- Augusta however, it was later rejected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act 1965. In Shelby County vs Holder, Supreme Court struck down Section 4 terming it unconstitutional while it retained Section 5. However, without Section 4, the overall significance of Section 5 is almost negligible. While striking down the law, Supreme Court declared that the law is based upon 40 years old

IBM's workforce management initiative(WMI) Essay

IBM's workforce management initiative(WMI) - Essay Example ) is basically an approach to the human capital management which would make the company a global integrated enterprise whose operations cut across wide geographical areas and which placed various value creation processes in a worldwide arena that optimized their productivity and efficiency (Boudreau 2010). The idea of WMI actually was developed by the then IBM’s chief human resource officer, Randy MacDonald in 2003 and was later supported by other members of the work force. This idea required a lot of changes to be done in the management. According to the IBM’s management, one of the important moves towards the achievement of its goal was to start a business metaphor for the IBM which would be a basis for what was referred as ‘decision Science’ for talents. The ‘decision science’ is what actually the IBM envisioned. The idea here was to consider the existing employees, applicants, vendor supply and learning as alternative sources of talents supply which were actually based in different geographical areas and within different individuals (Boudreau 2010). It had also to consider some other factors as the language used in such areas as job description; competencies and knowledge, skills and abilities. This is used in describing the resources and also defining and organizing decisions and views towards the resources. There was also need for an expertise taxonomy which would help classify the jobs by identifying things like job roles(JR) and job role skill sets (JRSS) and also identifying coming upon with common descriptors around the tasks executed by different people. By the year 2003, IBM had hundred thousands of full-time employees, over 90,000 contactors and above 40,000 applicants. These were grouped into roles such that by the year 2008, there were around 331 roles needed to define the company’s work force. Each role here represented hundreds of both applicants and contractors and over 1000 employees. There are several impacts associated with the