Hiring quotas in construction trades and affirmative action policy

Hiring Quotas

The idealism of the 1960's civil rights movement left the United States with social and moral standards that do not necessarily reflect the reality of the culture of business and opportunity. Within the words of the civil rights activists and even the non-activist everyday person there are ideals associated with diversity that are rarely reflected in the work place. For many compounded reasons including opportunity, de jure segregation and even outright discrimination women and minorities still hold fewer positions of power in the work place, especially in representation to their statistical occurrence in the larger population. It was for this reason that many organizations adopted hiring quotas as a part of what is today known as affirmative action. Yet even though these quotas have engendered change in the diversity of the workplace, these quotas are being challenged today, by some, as unnecessary and even unjust.

Stepping away from neutrality, the Nixon administration began defending the rights and responsibilities of labor boards and companies to meet hiring quotas that would establish higher percentages of minorities in the construction trades. They recognized the inability of some trades to increase minority hiring without such mandates.

Attorney General John Mitchell defended the Labor Department's policy [of minority hiring quotas] by arguing that "it is now well recognized in judicial opinions that the obligation of nondiscrimination... does not require, and in some circumstances may not permit obliviousness or indifference to the racial consequences of alternative courses of action which involve the application of outwardly neutral criteria."

Bryner 60)

Prior to these decisions by congress the civil rights legislation that was intended to assist the minority workers was being used to discriminate against them as individuals and businesses practiced "legal neutrality" which without proof of discrimination, a very difficult kind of proof to obtain, was considered legally responsible.

The Labor Department hailed its policy [of hiring quotas] as a "major breakthrough in the fight for equality of opportunity in employment."

(Bryner 60)

Before these quotas became a part of the construction trade, and in this case federal contract companies, the statistics of employment of minorities was pitiful. After the adoption of the hiring quotas there were significant changes that resulted in the employment of many more minorities and women in a trade that had been historically dominated by the majority almost since its beginnings.

During the Reagan administration challenges were made to the hiring quotas, again through the view of them upholding discrimination rather than combating it, because they used race and gender as a part of the process.

Laham 74)

Reagan reiterated his diehard opposition to racial and gender quotas in employment, arguing that "Quotas deny jobs to many who would have gotten them otherwise, but who weren't born a specified race or sex. That's discrimination pure and simple and exactly what the civil rights laws were designed to stop.9"

Laham 74)

Opponents, in the Reagan era were successfully able to challenge the attempts to discredit and abolish these affirmative action tools by arguing with the real numbers that proved their effectiveness. Yet, a more modern assault on the system seems to be gaining steam and threatening to abolish these effective tools for diversity. Opponents of affirmative action even call the policies discriminatory to the majority, referring to the white male as the invisible victim of discrimination.

Mcgowan)

Accepting the premise that a newsroom lacking in proportional representation of nonwhites cannot provide fair and accurate coverage of America's increasingly multicultural society, Sulzberger has called diversity "the single most important issue" his newspaper faces.

Mcgowan)

The media has demanded that the standard white, straight, middle class majority view is not representative of the culture, at large and should be balanced with fair, unbiased representation of the news. This includes representation of minorities and women in the work place, as well as the representation of their views within the stories told by the media. The media and many other fields challenge the demonstration of our culture as homogenous and white, male middle class. The media contends that the view of the culture as homogenous and exclusively majority perspective creates biases and prejudices in the culture through a lack of diverse perspective, many in the media demand representation through internal perspective, or hiring minorities and women the report the news.

What broadcast regulators can't obtain by edict, they are now going to insist on getting "voluntarily." Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard announced this week that the nation's biggest broadcasters have agreed to maintain at his request race-conscious hiring practices blocked by the courts. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox Network, Time Warner (which includes CNN) and other major broadcast companies have all signed onto Mr. Kennard's plans. ("Broadcast Hues" 2)

The standards that represent diversity were meant to be temporary, yet, it is clear that they are still needed, in many fields, as diversity has only been summarily realized and social change does not occur quickly, as some would have us believe.

Within the civil rights credos there are many ideals that have become at least a vocal standard for the moral voice of the culture. Yet, it is clear that social change is only gained through the slow and diligent work of many individuals who not only espouse credos but live by them and demand them in their environment. Without the standards and regulations of affirmative action tools, such as hiring quotas there are no real incentives for organizations to demand diversity. Without such tools it is realistically feared that the culture of diversity, we at least summarily recognize would again become one of de facto discrimination rather than just de jure discrimination.