THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506030385
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
A four-part series
PART ONE
OVERVIEW
SOURCE: Margaret Edds
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Jeannette Bacs can't understand all the fuss over affirmative action.
If it's such a powerful force in the American workplace, Bacs asks, why is it that she -- a white woman -- has been hunting unsuccessfully for a year for a job in her chosen field as a construction superintendent?
Why is it that phone calls don't get returned when she identifies her gender in job applications?
And why is it that she has experiences such as this:
Answering an ad for a construction supervisor recently, Bacs was informed that the job had been filled. When she persisted in asking for the person who'd reviewed her resume, it became clear that the receptionist had assumed Bacs was asking about a secretarial opening.
The superintendent's slot was still free. Even after that phone conversation, however, she didn't get called back about the job.
Affirmative action?
``It has no muscle in the private sector,'' thunders Bacs. ``Tell me where the muscle is. `We the government,' my foot.''
It's not as if the 51-year-old's resume is unimpressive.
Bacs has been superintendent, acting superintendent, or assistant superintendent on projects including the Virginia Beach Resort and Conference Center, Town Point Center and Riverside Corporate Center in Norfolk, and Triton Towers in Virginia Beach.
Sidelined by a 1990 automobile accident that required two years of therapy and by a stint running her own furniture store, Bacs has been dismayed by the difficulty of breaking back into construction.
``Most of those are good ol' boys who came out of the field,'' Bacs says of the competition. ``When you're out of work, you can't get back into line.''
Bacs scoffs at the notion that women have advanced to the point that they no longer need special protections in the marketplace. She believes the government should continue to promote affirmative action.
But even then, she said, ``I don't know how you're going to crack the industry on the nongovernment basis.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
by CNB