THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 5, 1995 TAG: 9506020548
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
PART TWO
BUSINESS
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 218 lines
The goals of affirmative action are clear: Create a work force that mirrors the community by countering the effects of prejudice. The results in the workplace often are confusion and frustration.
Consider the resumes of these Hampton Roads residents who are grinding their way through this grand experiment in social engineering:
Brad Law, 44, black male, civil engineer, City of Virginia Beach, middle management. He once arrived at a job site in West Virginia to a chorus of chuckles from the all-white crew.
``I'm not sure it would do any good to get rid of it, and I don't think it hurts to keep it,'' Law says of affirmative action. ``But the government can't institute rules that are going to change the mind-set of people.''
Pam Favor, 38, white female, civilian planner and estimator at the Norfolk Naval Public Works Center. She says she has been the first female in her work group at every job she's taken in 11 years.
``I wouldn't be where I am today without it - I'd still be in a secretarial job, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'd just rather be making $17 an hour than $7. Like every other government program, it sets out to please everybody and it steps on everybody's toes along the way.''
Beth Anderson, 34, white female, president of her own engineering firm in Virginia Beach. She was called ``princess'' by the boss at her first job at the Texas Highway Department and told by a prospective employer in Baltimore that her voice was ``too soft'' for the men on the construction site to hear her.
``There's not a perfect system. I think it's the best it can be. I don't think you can do away with it, and I don't think anybody's proposing anything better.
``There are a representative number of white males who don't pull their weight, either. Why should minorities be any different? There's an old quote: `You know it'll be equality when a female schmuck can get as far as a male schmuck.' ''
Mark Jaworowski, 40, white male, Army intelligence officer. He failed by two points to make the cut-off on his FBI admissions test and later discovered the minimum for whites was 15 points higher than for blacks.
``I think they should just promote - no pictures, no references to sex or ethnic background or anything, just the file,'' Jaworowski says. ``I believe in heavy recruiting. I believe in spending a lot of money for educating disadvantaged kids.
``I'm all for trying to do as much as you can, but everybody should have to meet the same standards.'' The workers' dilemma
Republican members of Congress have vowed to examine federal affirmative action requirements that they say are an unneeded burden on businesses. But the people who have been most profoundly affected in their day-to-day lives - the workers - are less certain the program should be dismantled.
Affirmative action may be less than perfect, they say, but it at least serves as a safety net.
Many workers view affirmative action with ambivalence, a view probably brought on by the mixed results of minority hiring programs.
In 1987, the Dallas engineering office where Law worked was closing. He wanted to stay in the area and interviewed for a job in Fort Worth.
``They didn't know what I was when I showed up,'' he says. ``The owner of the company told me he had never, ever had a black person work in that office, and I never heard from them again. I guess he was telling me he was never going to have one, either.
``That's the kind of thing people who are against affirmative action don't think happens anymore.''
The failures of affirmative action - which attempts to place minorities in jobs in proportion to their representation in communities - have left some whites feeling like they've sacrificed jobs or promotions to minorities for only a minimal gain for society.
``That's what causes the heartache,'' Jaworowski says, ``because you have friends that have spotless records and they are told, `Well, initially you were on the promotions list, but we had to pass you up.' ''
In the midst of this debate among politicians and the media, the country's businesses plod forward with minority hiring programs, convinced now that a diverse workforce is a necessity and a competitive advantage. Success or failure?
The backbone of affirmative action requirements dates to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination.
But the program got its teeth in 1971 when the Supreme Court ruled - in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. - that a company could be found guilty of discrimination if the ethnic and gender makeup of its work force didn't mirror that of its community.
Affirmative action has either failed to change the work force or is taking too long to succeed, says Paul Puryear, a professor at University of Virginia Center for Public Service.
Puryear is studying income, earnings and educational achievement of blacks and whites in Virginia from 1960 through 1990. When he compares blacks' income from the 1970 Census with their income in the 1990 Census, it often seems as though he's studying the same decade.
Black per capita income has improved only slightly over the past 20 years - from 48 percent of white per capita income in 1970 to 54 percent in 1990, Puryear found.
``It's kind of striking that there hasn't been that much movement,'' he says, ``although there's a feeling out there that blacks have been getting all these good jobs at the expense of whites.''
In 1970, blacks made 9.8 percent of the total income earned by Virginians. By 1990, that figure had risen to 11.3 percent.
The greatest gains were in the 1970s, Puryear says, during an influx of black college graduates in the workforce. The 1980s showed little progress.
``I find it hard to see how it has achieved what it set out to do,'' Puryear says. ``It has always worked imperfectly. I think most black people know there's rampant discrimination in our society.
``If you were to abolish affirmative action, what would you put in its place?''
Probably nothing, answers Pat Evans, director of human resources for Sentara Enterprises.
``My opinion is, probably people wouldn't bother having an affirmative action program if they weren't a government contractor,'' Evans says. ``They might act affirmatively, but they wouldn't go to the trouble of going through all the paperwork.''
Affirmative action is not required in private businesses - with the exception of those doing government work. But many companies are federal contractors. Sentara Health System, for instance, falls under the requirements because it provides health care to thousands of military personnel stationed in Hampton Roads.
Even with the requirements, Sentara hasn't diversified its work force as much as it would like, Evans says.
About 95 percent of the certified nursing assistants at Sentara are black. The executive and boardroom positions at the 10,000-employee company are ``very, very white,'' she says.
More typically, minorities occupy 15 percent to 20 percent of the midlevel jobs at Sentara.
When the U.S. Department of Labor finds a company employing too few minorities in a particular job grouping, the business is considered ``underutilized'' in that area.
The Labor Department also issues annual commendations for companies that it finds are doing good jobs of hiring minorities.
Though the government is diligent about monitoring the statistics, it is less focused on enforcing them. Private companies are required to report the makeup of their work forces to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but the government doesn't release those numbers to the public. EEOC has little recourse, other than gentle prodding, to enforce minority hiring.
And when a government contractor is underutilized, the Department of Labor normally doesn't play hardball, businesses say.
``They are very understanding of what's going on in corporate America - very realistic and understanding,'' says Steve Stutsman, manager of equal employment opportunity at Norfolk Southern Corp. ``But if there's things you could do better, they're willing to give you good ideas and help you improve your efforts.'' Here to stay
Ann Kelly, to a lot of people, is the public face of her company, Norfolk Southern.
Kelly, a piermaster at the Lamberts Point coalyard, directs ship captains and agents into the docks, coordinates Norfolk Southern's brakemen, federal customs agents, clerks and tugboat operators.
She thinks Norfolk Southern hired her 15 years ago for one reason: affirmative action requirements.
``They had to hire women,'' Kelly says, ``but I don't think I've gotten any job since then because I'm a woman. We were the first women that were hired to work nonsteno jobs.
``Now, there are women in Norfolk Southern in police jobs, we have a female engineer, a woman in the claims department, and when I came here 15 years ago there were no women in any of those jobs.''
National and international businesses such as Norfolk Southern say they would push for a diverse work force regardless of federal requirements.
``We think because of the nature of our business the diversity of the work force is evident out there,'' Stutsman says. ``The value of a diverse work force is you get people challenging each other and you don't get that group mentality.''
Another value is measured on Wall Street. Four university professors studied the effects of discrimination lawsuits and Department of Labor diversity awards on the stock prices of dozens of companies.
The conclusion: Companies receiving a Department of Labor award saw their stock prices rise on the two trading days following the commendation. Companies suffering a courtroom loss over a discrimination lawsuit saw their share prices drop.
``You always hear the comments that it's good business practice, and yet there are few studies on the bottom-line impact of these programs,'' said Janine S. Hiller, a Virginia Tech business law professor who worked on the study.
``These are companies that got the awards because of innovative programs, and it has created a competitive advantage.''
Even with the free market's apparent endorsement of affirmative action programs, many of the employees who work under those guidelines say the government should stay involved - if only as a precaution.
Yet they're pessimistic that any law can change society. Only time can make that change, says Brad Law, the Virginia Beach engineer.
``I'd say in 20 years as the older mindset dies off, things will be a lot different,'' Law says. ``In 50 years, I think it will be a whole lot different.''
Beth Anderson, the woman who started an engineering firm, shudders to think what the workplace would be like without affirmative action.
``The normal kind of day-to-day discrimination,'' she says, ``it's not news. It's life.'' ILLUSTRATION: JOB PROSPECTS IN HAMPTON ROADS
Graphic
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
Source: 1990 U.S. Census
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Beth Anderson, president of a Virginia Beach engineering firm, says,
"There's not a perfect system."
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Ann Kelly, a Norfolk Southern piermaster at the Lamberts Point
coalyard, thinks she was hired 15 years ago for one reason: She's a
woman. "They had to hire women, but I don't think I've gottne any
job since then because I'm a woman.
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Brad Law, 44, a civil engineer for the city of Virginia Beach, is
ambivalent about affirmative action: "The government can't institute
rules that are going to change the mindset of the people."
KEYWORDS: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION by CNB