Hiring quotas and employment policy implications

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.

Lynch iii)

Yet clearly the hiring quotas established by the civil rights legislation and it aftermath have clearly demonstrated a good, albeit artificial, start to the establishment of representative diversity in the work place. "In 1964, just as the Civil Rights Act was being passed, it condoned 'temporary' hiring quotas in organizations with a history of racial discrimination. It continued to reject 'reverse discrimination,'"

Gavora) Reverse discrimination is a concept that claims that hiring quotas and other affirmative actions standards discriminate against the majority. Most legislators agree that the standards have and continue to make a difference in the opportunities of minorities and women to establish careers in non-traditional fields and possibly in positions of power that might further aide the cause of diversity. Many hope to demonstrate diversity in reality rather than in moral speak alone. The temporary nature of affirmative action polices has not yet served its full purpose as the standards of diversity are not representative in a majority of areas.

One representative force for change, the media, has historically demonstrated a plan of action to uphold diversity in their own field, through hiring quotas and diversity plans.

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.