
          Abandoning Affirmative Action
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 7, No. 3, 1985, pp. 1-2
          
          The Reagan Administration stands on the verge of severely weakening
affirmative action rules for federal contractors. As it is now
drafted, a proposed Presidential Order eliminates existing
requirements that deficient federal contractors set attainable goals
and timetables for the employment of minorities and women in
proportion to the number of available and qualified workers in a
particular labor market. The draft order also forbids the Labor
Department to statistically monitor contractors' compliance with the
goal of non-discrimination.
          "Existing affirmative action programs need only two
changes," says Southern Regional Council interim director Ken
Johnson, "stronger enforcement and presidential support."
          "In many Southern counties, white income is four, even five,
times higher than black income," Johnson continues. "Neither
Sunbelt Boom nor economic recovery has altered that fact. We
desperately need new and creative programs to increase minority
economic opportunity and reverse the effects of past discrimination,
not scrapping of policies which have proven demonstrably effective in
eliminating discrimination in the Southern workplace. We must not halt
the equal employment progress of the 1970s."
          Federal affirmative action programs affecting tens of thousands of
government contractors have been tested and improved since the late
1960s. The strongest, most effective section of existing federal
rules, which is the use of statistical goals, timetables, and
measurement of results, was actually put in place during the Nixon
Administration in a 1971 regulation usually called 'Revised Order 4.'
Efforts made during four Presidencies to eliminate economic inequities
felt by minorities and women have at last begun to bring visible
results. The existing requirement that federal contractors
statistically measure the makeup of their workforce does not impose
quotas at all, as affirmative action opponents have often
charged. Indeed, under Revised Order Number 4 "goals may not be rigid
and inflexible quotas which must be met, but must be targets
reasonably 

attainable by means of applying every good faith
effort."
          To support the conclusion that existing affirmative action rules
for federal contractors have been successful, the Southern Regional
Council has analyzed statistics on black occupational representation
in five Deep South states.
          The Council finds that both in the South, where the harshest racial
inequities remain, and nationally, significant numbers of blacks are
beginning to move upward from low wage, low status jobs into
traditionally white male, higher status jobs. The total number of jobs
held by blacks has expanded, outpacing black population growth.
          In the state of Georgia, for example, from essentially "zero"
beginnings in 1961, blacks in private businesses or industries
employing one hundred or more persons, or employed by federal
contractors with more than fifty employees accounted, by 1981, for 7.5 % of all officials/managers, 7.4 % of professionals, 15.7 %o of
technicians, 14.6 % of sales workers, 18.8 % of office/clerical
workers, and 17.6 % of craft workers.
          Drawing upon data from the US Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, the SRC's analysis shows that in Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina black representation has
increased from 1973 to 1981 in the higher status and traditionally
white occupations, while blacks as a percent of all laborers and
service workers declined. The five state representation of blacks
among all officials/administrators stood at 2.8 % in 1973, but had
risen to 6.6 % by 1981. The greatest gains--both in the South and
nationally--were made following issuance of Revised Order 4 in 1971,
with its requirements of goals and timetables for contractors whose
work forces gave evidence of discrimination.
          The results of several other recent studies demonstrate national
progress in advancement of minorities and women under affirmative
action policies. A 1984 study by the Office of Federal Contract
Compliance, covering over 77,000 establishments employing a total of
20.8 million workers, found that in 1974 non-contractors employed
somewhat higher proportions of minorities than contractors in six of
nine job categories. By 1980, contractors--operating under the more
stringent affirmative action requirements of the '70s--had surpassed
or almost caught up with non-contractors in minority participation
rates in six of the nine job categories used in job force analysis.
          The Leonard Report, a study partially funded by the Labor
Department and released in 1984, concluded that "while the
targeting of enforcement could be improved, and while the impact of
affirmative action on other groups is unclear, the evidence in this
study is that affirmative action and Title VII (of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964) have been successful in prompting the integration of
blacks into the American workplace."
          If Reagan Administration officials such as William Bradford
Reynolds and Edwin Meese have their way, the President will soon sign
the draft executive order that undercuts affirmative action for
federal contractors, setting his hand to yet one more action in the
continuing effort to push back twenty years of civil rights
gains. 
        