Battling Bias in Steel

On the surface, the news seems to reflect a rare example of idealism: in quiet meetings with Government officials, leaders of the steel industry and the United Steelworkers of America are working out an agreement to change rigid promotion rules that have tended to keep blacks in the most menial and lowest-paying jobs in the mills. The pact would be the first such plan put forward voluntarily by a major industry. In another sense, though, the move appears to be considerably less than an exercise in altruism. Executives and union leaders seem to be trying to do the minimum the law requires in order to escape shelling out huge sums in back pay to blacks who have been kept from advancement in the past.

At stake are the strict "lines of promotion" seniority rules that have traditionally been part of steel labor contracts. Under these complex schemes, each employee learns to perform the job ranking immediately above his own.

When an opening for a higher job occurs, workers can "bid" for it on the basis of their length of service in the unit. But these rules apply only within narrowly defined groups of jobs, or "lines," and seniority is not transferable from one line to another. Thus if a black with long years of service reaches the top of, say, a blast furnace line, he can go no higher unless he transfers to, perhaps, the rolling-mill section--and then he must start at the bottom of that line, often behind workers who have been employed at the plant for a shorter period; in many cases he loses part of his paycheck as well. Although the same rules apply to whites, blacks contend that the burden has fallen unfairly on them because racist hiring practices have lumped them in the industry's dirtiest, hottest jobs, from which the promotion lines go only a short way up.

Blacks have been protesting these rules for more than 20 years. In 1966 black workers at U.S. Steel's massive mill operations near Birmingham, Ala., took the company and several union locals to court. This past August, Federal Judge Sam C. Pointer Jr. ordered U.S.

Steel and three union locals to pay $200,000 to 61 black workers who, he figured, might have earned that much if a fair promotion system had been in effect. If the ruling were applied as a precedent throughout the industry, the companies and the Steelworkers might be forced to disburse many millions of dollars in back pay to nonwhites.

Earlier this year, company and union leaders approached Treasury Secretary George Shultz, who is well known to them as a former arbitrator, to enlist his help in drafting a plan. Shultz put them in touch with officials of the Department of Justice, and a series of unpublicized meetings began. The plan that is emerging would not only make seniority transferable from one line of promotion to another but would also set up timetables for hiring and promoting specific numbers of nonwhite workers. It would also establish a system known as "redcircling" to ensure that no black worker who transferred into a predorn-inantly white division would have to take a cut in pay.

Back Pay. Though that would seem to be a significant if long-delayed victory for civil rights advocates, they are not satisfied. Union officials claim that they consulted black workers in drawing up the plan, but no blacks are on the team negotiating with the Government. Moreover, the negotiators originally attempted to exclude from their deliberations William Brown III, aggressive chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Brown, the Government's chief anti-job discrimination official, has been particularly tough on the issue of back pay. Last winter the EEOC wrung an agreement from AT&T under which the company will shell out some $15 million to female and minority employees who, it contended, had been illegally confined to low-paying jobs that offered little opportunity for advancement.

When Brown learned of the steel-industry talks, he demanded that he be allowed to participate. He then began to insist that the industry and union award up to $45 million in back pay to aggrieved black workers. He has even warned that if the Labor and Justice departments approve an agreement that is unacceptable to the EEOC, the commission might go to court in an attempt to overturn it.

Brown's stand appears to have stalled the negotiations. His tenure as chairman of the EEOC expired five months ago, and President Nixon has nominated John H. Powell Jr., whom some civil rights leaders believe to be less adamant on back pay than Brown, to take his place. The steel men and union leaders may well be trying to stretch out the talks until Brown leaves office. But there is no way for them to escape the back-pay problem. Even if the pact is ratified, there is nothing to keep black workers from bringing suit on their own at a later date.

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