A Blow To Minorities

...AMES FINN COTTER TRAILWAYS TO JERSEY SHORE My mind, my window, let me wipe clean, make cattails welcome, let marsh grass in: shine, scimitar beaches, north savannahs, comem plains of cloud cotton, sky the shimmer of water, salt, sand, and sun...

...The pattern for the past thirty years, with its setbacks and temporary improvements, has resulted in a steady increase in the massive rolls of the jobless...

...The very success of Title VII litigation has provoked a growing opposition to the law and a stiffening of resistance to its requirements...

...The campaign against affirmative action is legitimizing new racist attacks and is stimulating anti-black attitudes...

...After the riots of the 1960s, there was a spate of investigating commissions to study the causes of the ghetto disturbances of that period...

...While pursuing Title VII remedies wherever possible, we should file lawsuits against employers and labor unions and government agencies under the relevant sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1966 and under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution...

...In every industry, in every sector of the economy, blacks bear the greatest burden of unemployment and endure the heaviest deprivation...

...Here is the most volatile single source of potential urban disorder...

...Correspondingly, white males as a class have benefited from this systematic discrimination...

...Furthermore, the courts ordered millions of dollars in back pay to non-white workers and women who had been the victims of systematic discrimination...

...This argument turns on the notion of individual rights and sounds very moral and high-minded, indeed...

...The Supreme Court and seniority systems Last June 1, racial minorities and women suffered a harsh blow when the Supreme Court ruled that seniority systems that perpetuate discriminatory job practices are not necessarily illegal if the systems were in operation before July 1965...

...The brief amicus curiae of the AFL-CIO in Evans was not only an attack on women workers and blacks locked into segregated seniority structures, it was also a repudiation of the fundamental premises of Title VII...

...Roy Wilkins and I repeatedly presented the results of NAACP investigations and the complaints received from our members to the top leadership of many labor unions...

...The retreat of the federal courts occurs during a most difficult time for black America...

...It also signifies the end of the era that began with the Court's decision in Brown v. Board oJ Education in 1954...

...Third, we must continue to monitor the activities of federal agencies charged with equal employment responsibilities...

...Immediately after Title VII went into effect in 1965, Commonweal: 553 the NAACP acting on behalf of our members and black workers generally, filed many complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against employers and labor unions responsible for institutional patterns of job discrimination as a result of segregated seniority provisions in labor-management agreements...

...The struggle of black workers to end the systematic pattern of occupational segregation and discrimination is a long and hard one...

...For most black wage-earners, a return to economic normalcy is merely a continuation of economic deprivation...

...Secondly, we must defend the principle of affirmative action even if it means that our fair-weather friends depart...

...Black people must have their full and fair share of whatever jobs exist at any given time...

...And finally, we must at all costs wage a counterattack against those who seek to subordinate the interests of black workers to the interests of other groups who have long benefited from oppressing minorities...

...Each of these commissions was charged to examine the causes of the various riots and to make recommendations to prevent such occurrences in the future...

...No matter how adverse the circumstance, we must continue the fight and develop the necessary programmatic responses...

...Even during periods of relative prosperity, the rate of unemployment for minorities has remained unacceptably high, often as much as two or three times as high as the rate of the general working population...

...But nothing really changed for the black worker, as the same unions year in and year out continued to negotiate discriminatory labor agreements: labor agreements that were wrong then and are wrong now...

...They and their union representatives year after year deliberately negotiated discriminatory labor agreements that gave whites very sub2 September 1977:552 stantial benefits at the expense of black workers...

...A basic characteristic of the American economic system is the cyclical roller-coaster, which vacillates between periods of depression, near depression, or relative prosperity...

...In 1946, Congress passed a full employment act which changed nothing for black workers and their families, and it is doubtful that this problem can be solved by legislation...

...This article is based on an address given at the recent NAACP convention in St...

...In its seven to two ruling, the Court held that unless plaintiffs can prove intent, seniority systems in force before Title VII of the Civil Rights Act took effect are valid, even if those systems bring into the present the effects of race and sex discrimination...

...Justices Marshall and Brennan concluded that the ruling of the Court would mean that equal employment opportunity for a full generation of minority workers would remain a "distant dream...

...But white America prefers not to remember the grim warnings of these reports...

...A major demand of those who participated in the massive civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s was the right to employment and an end to the patterns of occupational segregation which locked out black workers from the good jobs, and froze them into dead-end classifications...

...The decisions in the seniority cases are a disgraceful retreat from the goal of justice for racial minorities and women...

...For example, black workers have not been denied jobs as individuals but as a class--no matter what their personal merits and qualifications...

...In its railroad industry hearings, the FEPC documented the relationship between the collective bargaining status conferred on railroad unions by the Railway Labor Act and the power of those unions to negotiate agreements with railroad companies that systematically segregated blacks in some crafts and excluded them from others in an industry in which there had formerly been a substantial proportion of jobs available to them...

...The opponents of affirmative action are ahead in presenting their ease to the public, and we must be prepared to answer effectively all the lies about "quotas" and "reverse discrimination...

...Justice Marshall said he could not believe that the Congress that enacted the Civil Rights law "would have agreed to postpone for one generation the achievement of economic equality...

...Between 1941 and 1946, the World War II Fair Employment Practice Committee, in its hearings and investigations, demonstrated that major sections of organized labor systematically deprived blacks of employment rights with impunity...

...The campaign to weaken affirmative action requirements must be offset by our campaign to demonstrate the non-enforcement of these requirements...

...The major institutions of society are back doing business as usual, and we can predict with a high degree of certainty what the various national and local commissions studying the civil disorders of the 1980s will be saying about the significance of job discrimination to urban violence...

...The Supreme Court acted in response to a well orchestrated, nationwide propaganda campaign against what our enemies call "reverse discrimination," a campaign of malicious distortion and the manipulation of racial fears among whites...

...But it ignores basic social reality...

...This means that at least half of the young black population is in a permanent condition of hopelessness and despair, and that the social and psychological costs in wasted lives constitutes a major tragedy in contemporary American life...

...Among these were the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, the McCone Commission in Los Angeles, the Hughes Commission in 2 September 1977:554 Newark, and other such groups in Detroit, Cleveland and Rochester...

...Black workers brought other lawsuits against major employers and labor unions, and early in the 1950s the NAACP Labor Department began to hammer away against the structure of separate racial seniority systems in many industries...

...First, we must vigorously battle against the current retreat in the courts...

...Spin, pinwheels, milkweed, in parks of the mind, come, feathers of bracken: make sedges welcome, weeds, reeds, and rushes, blow dandelion puffballs, breathe pollen i n - here clams and cockles, sand dollars swim...

...Women have not been denied training and jobs as individuals, but as a class regardless of their individual talent or lack of it...

...Full employment, while of course desirable, by itself solves nothing for the black worker...

...But the whites who benefited from the systematic denial of the rights of black workers are not innocent...

...We urged action, but instead, the leaders of organized labor gave us kind words and empty promises about what they would do to eliminate discrimination in the sweet bye-and-bye...

...The Court in essence told blacks and other minorities that they cannot expect redress during this period from the judicial system...

...Many of these cases were eventually to find their way to the federal courts, and for the first time black workers were able to move into the hitherto "lily-white" lines of job progression...

...The retreat of the labor federation was sharply expressed in its brief amicus curiae in Evans v. United' Airlines, one of the three cases decided by the Supreme Court on June 1. In its brief, the AFL-CIO attacked one of the most effective remedies the courts have developed in Title VII litigation, restoring blacks and women to the place they would have held had it not been for discriminatory hiring and promotion practices...

...It is also argued by the defenders of the racial status quo that the issue is not seniority, but rather problems of the economy, and when we have full employment, everything will be just great...

...He has served /or many years as labor directo[ o/ the National Association /or the Advancement o/ Colored People, and is the author of the ]orthcoming book Black Labor and the American Legal System...

...But instead of taking action where action was needed, the leaders of organized labor arranged for more meaningless civil rights resolutions and proclaimed their undying devotion to the principle of racial equality --not immediately, of course, but at some future time when brotherhood is achieved...

...It was the courts that were ordering extensive changes in job practices codified in collective bargaining agreements held to be in violation of the law...

...Soon after the merger in 1955 between the AFL and the CIO, the Association's Labor Secretary prepared extensive memoranda for the newly merged labor federation, again requesting that action be taken to eliminate segregated seniority lines which were negotiated by many labor unions into their collective bargaining agreements...

...To salvage the Civil Rights Act on behalf of black workers, we must counter the arguments our opponents use against the interests of minority wage-earners...

...In steel manufacturing, in oil and chemical refining, in pulp and paper processing, and in other unionized industries characterized by institutional patterns of job discrimination, the NAACP carefully documented and took action against segregated job lines...

...A coalition that can only exist on the basis of sacrificing the most vital interests of the black community is not worth preserving...

...The notion that these white workers are innocent and blameless is a myth and I categorically reject this notion...

...More civil rights departments were established, more press releases issued, and more pious statements distributed...

...Unemployment has been a persistent problem for women, young workers, and racial minorities during both good times and bad times...

...As in the past, social and economic forces will generate ghetto rebellions that may require us to regard the civil disorders of the 1960s as mere prelude...

...Quite clearly, organized labor has succeeded, through the Nixon Court, in gutting Title VII...

...Organized labor found, to its great chagrin, that instead of a federal version of the ineffective state fair employment practice statutes, Title VII was being interpreted and enforced by the judiciary...

...To do this effectively, it may be necessary to file an extensive series of lawsuits against the Labor Department and HEW, among others...

...In each and every city, continuing discrimination in employment was found to be a major contributing factor in causing the riots...

...But now the Supreme Court has reversed this body of law in decisions that are grounded not on judicial principles and certainly not on the 1972 amendments of Title VII, which explicitly approved the decisions of the courts in Title VII seniority litigation...

...The performance of these agencies, especially those charged with contract compliance responsibilities, has been derelict in the extreme...

...decisions fortify the racial caste system in employment and will make more difficult the attack on patterns of job discrimination...

...In northeast metropolitan poverty areas, to take one example, the unemployment rate for black sixteen-to-nineteen year olds is now 44 percent, for whites 21 percent...

...The condition of black people is again declining and for many in poverty areas is already more desperate than it was during the most serious riots of the 1960s...

...This argument is as phony as the first one, as it too ignores reality...

...I reject the notion that whites have a prior right to work and that blacks must wait until some far distant time in the future when the goal of full employment is perhaps realized...

...We should attempt to salvage Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for present and future generations and continue such activity with a combination of social action and litigation...

...A key element in this difficult battle has been the problem of separate racial seniority lines in union contracts...

...In Evans, a case involving job discrimination based on sex, the AFL-CIO attacked the validity of the line of decisions in seniority cases beginning with Quarles v. Philip Morris, Inc., and again demonstrated that its primary commitment was to the white male worker...

...Instead of action to eliminate segregated job classifications, they resorted to self-serving public relations efforts...

...Soon thereafter, the Supreme Court in 1944 in its decision in Steele v. Louisville & Na~hviUe Railroad provided a limited remedy through the doctrine of fair representation...

...It is potentially most dangerous and must be effectively countered by all groups committed to advancing civil rights...

...The nationwide black unemployment rate remains officially more than double the rate of unemployment among whites, but it is actually much greater, as government statistics do not include young blacks who never entered the labor force and older, discouraged workers who dropped out...

...Louis...

...This economy may seem to take a step forward but only to fall three steps behind in due course...

...Six circuit courts of appeal in some thirty cases held that minority employees not only have a right to move into the all-white job classifications, but that they must be permitted to take their accumulated plant-wide seniority with them...

...Bend, wind, tall poplars, willow catkins wave: make scrub pine enter, let wildwood in, buttonbush in blossom, spruce, maple, and alder-fade, fall of far waters heard in pine forests from mountain shelters...

...A campaign conducted by the opponents of racial justice...

...555...

...Those who defend traditional seniority practices argue that "while discrimination is of course undesirable, why penalize innocent white workers...

...Commonweal...

...We fought for this approach as we believed it to be in accordance with fundamental principles of equity and justice and .in accordance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Acts of 1964 and 1972...

...In a blistering dissent Justice Thurgood Marshall, joined by Justice William Brennan, argued that the de, cision of the Court would have a "devastating impact" on minorities who prior to 1965 were "assigned the lowest paid, most menial jobs in many industries throughout the nation, but especially in the South...

...The recent decisions give discriminatory employers and labor unions a new legal weapon to wipe out the gains of the past, to turn the clock back, and to more firmly impose racist patterns which continue to lock black workers in the lowest paying, dirtiest, and most unhealthy jobs, where they are more vulnerable to unemployment than any other group in the labor force...

...Apologists for the conservative labor bureaucracy tell us that we must not hurt whites who are allegedly not responsible for past discriminatory practices...

...TOM MCKEOWN OTBER LIVES Whenever the white figures of myself appear in the branches, the lives I have not lived, I sing to them for strength and mercy, sing that they may forget themselves and their solemn purposes...

...Of the greatest significance is the fact that the highest rate of unemployment among all categories is now experienced by black teenagers and young workers--almost 50 percent...

...The action of the Court denies the aspirations of a whole generation of black workers who fought for and won the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 including its employment section known as Title VII...

...Those who are committed to the future of black Americans know that the stakes are much too high for us to lose the battle...

...The realistic predictions of many economists clearly indicate a continuation of large-scale unemployment, especially for black workers, as a permanent feature of the economy...

...The HERBERT HILL will join the University o/ Wisconsin ]acuity this fall as a pro/essor of industrial rela,tions and A/ro-American studies...

...I agree with the views of the dissenters...

...The AFL-CIO, one of the major lobbying groups which supported the original Act in 1964, became increasingly hostile to the law as many of their largest and most important affiliates were repeatedly involved as defendants in costly and protracted litigation under Title VII...

...There is a deceptive calm in the black ghettos of this country and the current racial situation contains within it the potential for widespread violent eruptions in the future...

...A struggle conducted against powerful adversaries including employers, labor unions, and the government...