Goals That Look Like Quotas

THE Government took two jolting steps last week to eliminate discriminatory hiring and promotion practices in business. In one case, American Telephone and Telegraph Co. agreed to pay $38 million in back pay and raises to thousands of women, blacks and other employees who were discriminated against. The Labor Department also ordered Bethlehem Steel Corp. to improve its job opportunities for blacks by revising its seniority system, an area usually regarded as a key preserve of management and unions. The moves, the farthest-reaching the Government has yet taken to root out bias in business, sent a chill of concern through managements across the U.S.

Most major employers immediately began uncertainly assessing their programs for improving job prospects for women and minority workers lest the Government step in. Notes one high Midwestern executive: "Our firm is vulnerable-hell, everyone is."

Back Pay. Because AT&T must get the approval of the Federal Communications Commission for rate increases, the company is especially vulnerable to Government prodding. Most of its workers are women, and they have almost always been hired for low-paying jobs as operators or clerks and given little chance for advancement. In a pact with the Labor Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, AT&T agreed to make a record one-time payment of $15 million in back wages to employees whose incomes have been held down because of job discrimination. The back pay will go to 13,000 women and 2,000 minority men employees who, AT&T agreed under Government pressure, have been arbitrarily assigned to low-paying jobs. This "delayed restitution" sets a major precedent: it will be given even to workers who never sought promotions because they believed that company policy automatically banned them. The one-time payment will be made under various plans. For example, $7.5 million of the restitution money will be given to 3,000 women now in craft jobs like phone installers and cable splicers because initially they received less pay than men doing identical work.

In addition, AT&T agreed to improve employment conditions for 36,000 minority and women workers by increasing wages and stepping up their promotions. This part of the pact will cost the company another $23 million. Under a new hiring policy, the company will try to hire enough men to make up 10% of the operators' force and 25% of the clerical staff. As part of the agreement, the EEOC will withdraw its discrimination charges against the company before the FCC.

The Labor Department also ordered Bethlehem Steel to revamp seniority rules at its big mill in Sparrows Point, Md. These rules have kept most blacks in relatively menial jobs. If a black managed to get a transfer to a better job, he had to give up the seniority rights he had built up over the years and risk being among the first fired in a layoff. The Government order demands that workers, black and white, be allowed to transfer to other departments and keep all their seniority rights. Those seeking transfers, however, must meet rudimentary requirements showing that they are capable of learning how to do the higher-paying work.

Workers who can qualify must be considered for such posts on the basis of their overall time with the plant, even if it means bumping an employee in a predominantly white department who is in line for the job but has fewer years of seniority. Local United Steel Workers Chief Edward E. Plato termed the order "discrimination in reverse." Outgoing Labor Secretary James Hodgson asserts that the company must either comply or face the loss of its Government business.

Though most businessmen agree that flagrant discrimination must be eliminated, the Government's actions, especially in imposing extremely precise "hiring goals" on AT&T, smack of enforced quotas, which the majority of managers vigorously oppose. Their misgivings were in no way eased by William H. Brown, chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who said that he hopes the AT&T agreement will serve as a model for future Government negotiations with business.

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