Discrimination and the Unions

...But it does not in any way interfere with existing job rights...

...The ranks were then opened up and tests given...

...Or maybe the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Census Bureau—both of them experienced at nose counting...

...Yet, although the labor movement continuously reminds us of its support for anti-discriminatory legislation, its somewhat defensive repetition of this point indicates that something has gone wrong...

...The judges may now have to direct more attention to strike action and walkouts by Negro workers in protest against discriminatory policies where the union supports neither their position nor the stoppage itself...

...The dispute concerns the remedy to eliminate what is unlawful...

...Moreover, as some of Walter Reuther's recently expressed frustrations with the craft unions reveal, the resistance to institutional change has also begun to emerge more clearly at the international level...

...In retrospect, it is curious to recall labor's unanimous endorsement of Title VII...

...More talk will not change the trade-union positions which have been referred to above: only court action could do the job...

...Congress and the courts have established a duty for the unions to treat their members without discrimination...

...However, my proposal included review by EEOC and the courts, if necessary, to determine whether evasion of Title VII had taken place...

...It is something more fundamental, suggesting that organized labor is out of step with the general drift of job advancement for Negroes when that advancement tampers with established union policies and procedures...

...Our support for strengthening the Commission's powers will not be automatically forthcoming in the future, and it will not be forthcoming at all if the Commission demonstrates a healthy measure of bias on its own part towards building trades and apprenticeship and the hiring halls...

...This plan was too radical for the unions...

...The cry of "black power" may be nonsensical rhetoric...

...A labor leader like Harry Van Arsdale of the New York City Labor Council has opened up apprenticeship opportunities for minority youth in his own Local 3, IBEW...

...This is what happened in the UAW, where Reuther's new policy seems largely due to the efforts of the Negro American Labor Council...

...But for the time being, Negroes may well be justified in organizing more "black unions" in areas where the established labor movement will not tread, and by seeking effective representation for Negro workers where AFL—CIO unions are not providing it...

...Large Negro memberships have also made it less difficult for them to speak out, for instance, against formal racial exclusions and the separation of Negro workers in segregated locals...

...What was said by the Civil Rights Commission in 1961 still holds: "within the labor movement...

...This is a scandal, however, that is being vigorously fought by every unionist, black or white, who is worthy of the name...

...A remedy must take into account the seniority previously accumulated and attempt to compensate for what would have been obtained but for discrimination...

...Moreover, Van Arsdale has been instrumental in the placement of Negro workers with other unions...

...Outside of this unit, an employee loses all seniority and is subject to immediate layoff and loss of promotion rights...

...This refusal to abide with civil rights legislation penetrates the union's own bailiwick and tends to disrupt efforts by those in both the civil rights and labor movements who still seek to fashion a Negro-laborliberal coalition that will be a vehicle for effective reform, For while liberals like Gus Tyler talk about the need for such an alliance (see his recent book, The Labor Revolution), the unions seem unwilling or unable to take the initiatives which could make such a pact beneficial to both sides...

...The case was decided by arbitration in November 1966—in a hearing held without any of the civil rights groups that had negotiated the agreements in question...

...This factor not only limits the number of apprenticeship openings but leads to a little-publicized corollary: entry into apprenticeship programs, though it may provide the Negro community with a small cadre of sophisticated civil rights leaders, is hardly the answer to job inequality, let alone to the frighteningly high rate of Negro unemployment...

...Actually, these extraordinary efforts, viewed from the AFL,-CIO vantage point, are quite necessary...

...It impinged upon the cherished concept of free collective bargaining...

...The opinion neglected to mention the above referred-to decisions on rival unions or to note that a civil rights organization should be far less disruptive to the concept of an exclusive representative than a rival union...

...Until Negroes have a say about the basis upon which any coalition is to be formed, it is not likely to thrive...

...Without racial considerations, there would be nothing inherently meritorious in one seniority system as opposed to another...

...Moreover, the arbitrator held that the contractual obligation to hire more Negroes was unlawful "preferential" treatment, a theme which is being used against minority employment in many contexts...

...Used as a bargaining lever to gain concessions from the labor movement, the "black union" concept may have something to commend it as a temporary measure...

...But color consciousness is going to be a necessity if Negro workers are to make meaningful advances...

...Both the MFLU and the Independent Alliance are representative of increased organizational cooperation and racial pride among Negroes —as distinguished from racism or "black power" insofar as that term signifies an anti-white philosophy...

...But it is obvious that a narrow unit, department, or classification, is detrimental to the Negro worker who has been denied the right to accumulate seniority, in the unit to which he now advances, because of a discriminatory promotion policy...

...Until 1962, when a vacancy was created with the understanding that it would go to a Negro, Reuther stated that the selection of a Negro to remedy this situation would be racial discrimination in reverse...

...On the other hand, I have seen "conciliation agreements" between EEOC and Negro workers which accord the latter far less than Title VII requires...

...I propose that Negro workers, once having entered this formerly all-white line, could exercise seniority accumulated on the "Negro job" after a "residency" period was completed during which the skills of the job could be learned...

...While it is foolish to regard phenomena like the Maryland Freedom Union as a serious threat to the established order, such groups may make the AFL—CIO sufficiently uncomfortable to encourage a more responsive attitude toward Negro demands...

...The majority of their members do not like to be disturbed...

...Without such an approach, the Negro worker's present employment status continues to embody within it past discrimination...

...The CIO unions, particularly, pushed hard for civil rights legislation when the issue was far more moral than political —as it was 20 years ago...

...it] doesn't lend itself to a proclamation...

...An enumeration of apprentices by racial groupings, naturally...

...In Columbus, Ohio—where the Justice Department brought suit on April 13 against Local 683 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for engaging in a "pattern or practice" of discrimination (the first such suit under the 1964 Civil Rights Act)—some government contractors are being forced to hire Negro craft workers through an organization called the Independent Alliance of Skilled Crafts...

...Schoemann makes it clear in his article that, regardless of what information the Commission obtains, his union will defend the father-son apprenticeship policy which serves as a "grandfather clause" in keeping Negroes out of some of the most lucrative jobs in the country...

...11 The most fundamental and serious controversies, however, involve the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC...

...Insofar as it means self-defeating separatism rather than organizational solidarity...

...Race questions disturb...

...In 1965, the WDL was able to place 11 Negroes in an apprenticeship class of 65...

...Unless the Negro community begins to appreciate the very small gains that flow from the tumbling of this barrier, insoluble frustrations will remain...

...For the latter group has built up reasonable expectations, even if predicated on segregation, as to the future of its employment status...

...MFLU has recently negotiated a contract with Roth's Supermarket in East Baltimore in which wages were substantially increased...

...Schoemann was responding to the EEOC's stepped-up offensive against the exclusion of Negroes from the skilled trade unions which regulate the apprenticeship programs and hiring halls and therefore control the supply of labor for some of the more lucrative jobs in the economy...

...Perhaps rather, since people are going to do what I described anyway, the real issue is their right to do it honestly and aboveboard, without the need for becoming ingenious experts at manipulating gobbledygook...

...civil rights goals are celebrated at the higher levels but fundamental internal barriers tend to preserve discrimination at the workingman's level...

...this will permit appraisal of the number of minority-group people within the membership and the apprenticeship programs...

...but grievances have priorities and racial discrimination is not high on the Caucasian list...

...There is hardly a person who seriously contends that this practice is lawful...

...It's their hot idea, not ours...

...I therefore suggested in both a report to the Commission and in an article in the Winter 1967 issue of the Howard Law Journal—that an accommodation be arrived at between the competing interests of Negro and white workers...

...The one-sided response to what is admittedly a difficult question was that the Commission is not authorized to reform labor contracts involving "vested rights" of white employees...

...The more sensible Negro approaches, however, do not express opposition to the union qua union but rather seek to limit the arbitrary uses of union power...

...I myself am, in my own capacity, committed to end the vestiges of discrimination in the trade union movement, but I absolutely refuse to conduct the battle along lines that will ultimately injure the labor movement...

...As might be expected, the right-to-work advocates have attempted to capitalize on the mood of outrage and to convince the Negro community that unionism, as an institution, is hostile to the aspirations of colored workers...

...While it might not be fair to place the entire AFL—CIO in the Plumbers' compartment (but see AFL—CIO SecretaryTreasurer William F. Schnitzler's recent statement that accusations of racial discrimination against building trades unions are "unadorned bunk"), it would seem that their view is the one expressed by the first Justice Harlan dissenting in Plessy v. Ferguson...

...But the conduct of District 65 and people like Van Arsdale is simply not widespread enough...

...The AFL—CIO Civil Rights Department contends that a remedy that disrupts negotiated seniority procedures would break faith with the interpretation of the Civil Rights Act which they have given to their members...

...The explanation for this is that the Negro worker, once on the job for a number of years, becomes more sophisticated about how the system operates than is the teen-ager who wants to get into an apprenticeship program...

...If the answer is yes, then clearly the price of coalition is too high and, at least for the time being, the Hill approach becomes a plausible technique for extracting concessions...

...But it is doubtful whether such unions can provide Negro workers with resources, financial and otherwise, to improve their work conditions substantially...

...One example of this trend is the Maryland Freedom Labor Union, which is staffed by Negro workers and serves as a bargaining agent for employees—practically all of whom happen to be colored—in a small number of retail establishments in East Baltimore...

...Civil Rights leaders argue, on the other hand, that preferential treatment of Negroes is necessary because merely eliminating discrimination will not permit Negroes to advance rapidly enough...

...Or get the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training to do it...

...A growing discord between Negroes and the unions is graphically reflected in an article which appeared in the Daily Labor Report on April 3, reprinted from the monthly magazine of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters and written by Peter T. Schoemann, its president...

...Schoemann probably envisaged EEOC as an agency to be molded along the lines of state commissions which have waited for complaints to come to them...

...One must be careful to note that the craft unions were not the first in the labor movement to take this type of position...

...This would be special treatment to include Negroes in the pattern, but it would not be preferential treatment because it would extend to Negroes benefits which whites already enjoy...

...Where the AFL—CIO unions are in default, however, "black unions" can be a useful thorn in the labor movement's side...

...It was of little use to make the simple point that Congress had passed a statute prohibiting racial discrimination in employment regardless of whether collective bargaining agreements sanctioned the bias in question...

...Now, unless the White House decides that 1968 is too near and that the crafts are more likely to stray from the Democratic fold than are Negro workers, the Commission—which has been relatively inconspicuous thus far in terms of forcing institutional changes—will undertake a major confrontation...

...is there something indecent about giving reasonable preference to sons of union members on apprenticeship entrance...

...and perhaps more important, Hill asserted that the NAACP would support new "black unions" whenever the "AFL-CIO fail in their legal duty to provide fair and equal representation to minority group members and also where they refuse to organize in Negro ghetto areas...

...One is that the aggregate unemployment rate in the period 1961-65 in the construction industry actually exceeds the unemployment rate for Negro males during the same period of time...

...Certainly, no leadership has been so far in advance of its constituency as that of the labor movement on the civil rights issue...

...this litigation broke down the barrier of nepotism...

...That generalization, like all others, does not tell the whole story...

...Now anyone familiar with the process of collective bargaining knows that the unions themselves alter these "vested rights" on many occasions and that the courts have upheld such modifications...

...That characterization of Schoemann's remarks, however, is a bit unfair...

...All too often there is not enough informa tion available about even the apprenticeship program—information which might get to the Negro community and thus trigger a complaint...

...For the time being this would appear to be the case...

...Negro workers—who, after all, were forced out of the crafts by white employees after Reconstruction—have formed the Independent Alliance to fill the needs of employers who are fearful of having their government contracts revoked because of the absence of Negro workers and who, at the same time, cannot get Negro labor from the craft unions in Columbus...

...Historically, in many establishments—especially in the South, where the practice was carried out on a de jure basis—Negro workers were consigned to the lower paying, less desirable jobs...

...A recent proposal by Senator Robert F. Kennedy for the employment of slum residents on construction and renovation projects is a good starting point...

...The building trades make two points, however, for which a great deal more can be said...

...It is not probable—nor desirable— that black and white unions will engage in competition for the loyalty of Negro workers...

...I could not do this and still remain convinced that Negroes have a need and responsibility to make that movement stronger and more effective...

...One finds the Rustin line appealing, premised as it is on the coalition theory, until one ponders an essential question which he leaves unanswered: must it always be the labor movement itself which determines what is injurious to its interests...

...EEOC is embarking upon a program of record-keeping and reporting...

...This is not George Meany drawing away from the 1963 "March on Washington" for fear of a tactical error...

...Under federal law a union which is designated by a majority of the employees bargains as exclusive representative for all employees within the unit...

...How about that?—a practice odious to our membership and completely foreign to our traditions...

...for, as Peter Schoemann wrote in the article noted above, there have been a large number of complaints filed with EEOC alleging racial discrimination attributable to seniority provisions...

...The AFL—CIO has not paid sufficient attention to this segment of the work force and has thereby missed an opportunity...

...In the meantime, the unions are losing the support of some of their potentially most valuable allies...

...Even where sophisticated organizations like WDL intervene, there is no predicting the roadblocks that can be erected...

...Employers, of course, have already submitted to the very same questionnaires which are now required of the craft unions—but if the unions objected to this practice, their protestations were not very audible...

...Tyler overlooks the fact that nepotism is on the sharp decline in management circles (see Heilbroner, The Limits of American Capitalism...

...Reporting requirements for the crafts were unjustified, said Schoemann, because "there are few complaints of actual discrimination relating to building trades apprenticeship and hiring halls...

...Rustin went on to say that there is still discrimination in a minority segment of the American labor movement...

...Emphasis added.] This statement—completely unsupported by the legislative history of Title VII—has been used to get the unions off the hook with their white members who have profited from job segregation...

...In other words, one might say, "we will support Title VII only so long as it is not enforced against us...

...While the seniority dispute may not lend itself to a "proclamation," it certainly does warrant a policy...

...I believe that it is...

...In brief, I said that under practically no circumstances should Negroes displace whites...

...Curiously enough, this same principle is rationalized by Gus Tyler in The Labor Revolution on the ground that the same practices are followed by business people...

...Schoemann's first line of defense against what he considered an unwarranted intrusion into the private economy was that the Commission's experience over its two years of existence indicated that industrial and not craft unions should be singled out for special attention...

...The second point made by the craft unions is that the industrial unions—which do not control hiring but influence such on-the-job rights as promotions—do not have clean hands...

...For even the Workers Defense League —which has received cooperation from the craft unions in recruiting minority youngsters in New York and preparing them for apprenticeship entry tests—has begun to run into resistance from the Sheet Metal Workers Local 28...

...This is a big part of our fight...

...While portions of the civil rights agreement appeared to contradict the collective agreement negotiated by the Culinary Workers Union and were perhaps therefore void, the arbitrator's decision was so widesweeping in its exclusion of Negro representation that it provided the basis for justifiable furor in the San Francisco Negro community...

...It would seem that this agency—which cannot walk much faster than the pace proscribed for it by the White House —does not want to jostle the labor movement, at least the industrialunion side of it, as 1968 approaches...

...In Columbus and in many other cities, there is untapped organizing potential in Negro craftsmen who work outside the union structure, sometimes on a part-time basis, on any job they can obtain...

...But collective agreements often establish departmental or job classification seniority which designates the department or classification as the seniority unit...

...This flimsy pretense grasped at by Local 28 leaves a lasting impression...

...Even Professor Ray Marshall of the University of Texas—whose recent report to the Department of Labor, Negro Participation in Apprenticeship Programs, is quite charitable to the building trades—has said: Preferential treatment for Negroes is opposed, of course, because it might discriminate against whites...

...Emphasis added.] Quite obviously EEOC cannot bring into play sanctions of the Civil Rights Act which may encourage recruitment unless it knows where Negroes do not participate...

...In the AFL—CIO document, Civil Rights: Facts vs...

...In any event, both the Negro community and the unions should be cooperating in support of legislation which will increase employment opportunities for both black and white workers...

...EEOC was established by Title VII, the fair employment practice provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964...

...The purpose of the "residency" period would be to avoid promotion of the Negro employee with two weeks' experience on the job but more seniority than the white employee already on the job for two years...

...As the protests of 1963 and '64 with their picketing of "Jim Crow" construction projects begin to fade into history, so does the unequivocal blessing the AFL—CIO gave to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its fair employment provisions...

...Younger workers, for instance, might legitimately fence themselves into a narrow seniority unit out of fear of displacement by other workers with more plant-wide or company seniority...

...And apparently this fact has been lost on EEOC which, as former Chairman Schulman says, has no "policy...

...Although these practices normally antedated union recognition, unions and employers negotiated collective agreements which established seniority districts around each racial group...

...For the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, by establishing the reporting requirements to which the crafts so vigorously object, is for the first time on a collision course with a dominant philosophy in the labor movement—a philosophy which becomes particularly operative where internal union problems are concerned...

...iY Is the Negro to be assigned the subordinate role in the coalition...

...If they want to inspect the jobsites for members of racial minorities, why don't they do it themselves...

...Former Chairman Stephen Schulman is quoted in the January 5 Wall Street Journal stating that "[we] have no policy on seniority as such...

...In February of this year there was another visitor to the West Coast— Bayard Rustin, of the A. Philip Randolph Institute—who pointed out that "right to work" legislation meant "destroying the institution of collective bargaining and thus keeping Negroes and other minority members at the bottom of the economic ladder...

...This cannot come too quickly...

...The significance of this potential is underscored by the much publicized recent decision of Ethridge v. Rhodes were the Ohio District Court has held that the State of Ohio cannot enter into construction contracts with parties that will not "obligate themselves and be legally eligible and prepared actually to secure a labor force only from sources that will reasonably assure equal job opportunities...

...For example, apprenticeship sponsors who have not recruited among Negroes in the past and who have no Negro employees, trainees, or members might make special efforts to recruit Negroes or to help them acquire training...

...Rightly used it could be the most powerful instrument in our national life for promoting equal employment opportunity...

...III This controversy arises out of segregated job patterns...

...racial discrimination...

...But the Union decided that the scores registered by Negro applicants were too high to have been legitimately obtained, and the State Commission was required to go to court before the Union was restrained from voiding the results of the tests...

...Moreover, even if one unabashedly engages in preferential hiring, the deliberate selection of Negroes and other minority groups has a more rational basis for public policy than does the selection of a member's son...

...Some of the industrial unions, along with AFL—CIO representatives, have gone straight to the White House in an attempt to head off the establishment of "guidelines" by EEOC in an area of vast importance to many Negro workers—the discriminatory impact of seniority contractual provisions...

...The charge of "preferential treatment" is levelled against efforts to get Negroes into skilled jobs "through affirmative action" by the Commission...

...Indeed, the AFL—CIO has been resisting, albeit in a much more quiet and subtle fashion, a less stringent reporting system which EEOC is imposing upon "non-referral" unions...

...Where this sort of conduct makes it impossible for Negroes to work within the established structure, some form of independent action may be the only alternative...

...a necessary prerequisite to equal protection under the law is color blindness on the part of governmental agencies...

...Thus, Herbert Hill, labor secretary for the NAACP, came to San Francisco in December to call for the decertification of unions "that are engaged in antiunion practices" i.e...

...Is there something unclean about a contractor taking his own son into his own job in preference to a Negro boy whom some academic liberal in a Washington office thinks he ought to take instead...

...and they are both correct...

...They are agencies of protest and protection...

...I suggested that this residency period be devised through collective bargaining between labor and management, a proposal which my civil rights friends caustically regarded as a loophole for evasion...

...the interests of their members come first...

...For years it has been known that qualified Negro trade unionists could not be elected to the UAW Executive Board because Negroes were not in the majority in any single UAW constituency...

...If the problem were not so serious, it would be amusing to note that both sides of the AFL—CIO blame each other for failing to treat the Negro worker fairly...

...In a situation aggravated by the allegation that white leaders were being chosen for a majority of black workers, Gus Tyler of the ILGWU characterized the notion that Negroes would want to elect a Negro business manager as establishing a "raci t" rather than a "unionist" basis of voting...

...The first arises out of civil rights agreements negotiated in 1964 and 1966 between the Hotel Employers Association of San Francisco and various civil rights organizations...

...A number of recent disputes are representative of what I would describe as an unyielding response on the part of labor to certain fundamental Negro demands...

...For the moment, the Commission continues to rely on a "conciliation" process which attempts to persuade parties to sign settlement agreements...

...In another part of the same article, Schoemann, with apparent melancholy, says that: We helped get Title VII into the Civil Rights Act and so bring the Commission into being...

...As one who has attended EEOC discussions with civil rights organizations (and also with the AFL-CIO and some of the larger corporations), I must say I have never heard any civil rights spokesman advance a remedy which could objectively be labelled as "preferential treatment...

...Schoemann made it clear that the raison d'être of the Commission's program was even more distasteful: And what kind of report would be required...

...Although the courts are divided on whether a minority rival union has the right to engage in limited negotiations where certain employees prefer such representation to their own exclusive bargaining representative, the arbitrator ruled flatly that ". . . the civil rights group had no right to represent or purport to represent employees of the hotel with respect to terms or conditions of employment since the Union was the authorized bargaining representative...

...On the basis of this doctrine and certain hiring hall provisions in their collective bargaining agreement, the Culinary Workers Union challenged the validity of these agreements...

...And 1 have heard labor leaders say that EEOC should sit on its hands and wait for the remedy of full employment to wipe out seniority grievances...

...The unease with which the labor movement addresses itself to this subject is reflected in the manner in which the question is posed in the November 1966 issue of The American Federationist (the official monthly publication of the AFL—CIO) by Professor Ray Marshall: The seniority problem is complicated by a number of factors...

...As John E. Hutchinson writes in Employment, Race and Poverty: Most union leaders are unexceptional men, and their behavior is in some fashion predictable...

...In essence, unless a Negro worker is given some seniority credit for the purpose of future promotional opportunities and security layoff based upon time worked in the formerly segregated job, he is just as effectively denied equality through a "grandfather clause" as is the Negro applicant to a father-son apprenticeship program...

...that where a valid "line of progression" exists—where it is truly necessary to learn one job before proceeding to the next— Negro workers should go to the bottom of the line just as the whites had done, unless it could be shown that a Negro's presently existing skills entitled him to more...

...Two years ago, New York City's District 65, Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union went out on strike in order to upgrade Negroes and Puerto Ricans...

...But special programs for Negroes need not discriminate against Negroes or whites...

...Fiction, distributed prior to the passage of Title VII, these assurances are given: The law will properly put an end to discrimination in employment— including discrimination in seniority systems...

...Note how that emotive phrase "preferential treatment" creeps back into any discussion which may lead to sacrifice on the part of white workers to compensate Negro workers for lost opportunities...

...In 1964 there had been litigation before the New York State Human Rights Commission and the New York State courts concerning the union's traditional father-son rule which gives preference for apprenticeships to the son of a member...

...While one could hope for the day when racial and ethnic background are completely irrelevant to the selection of union leaders, the plain facts are that in most instances Negroes can only be elected if they apply pressure as an organized group...

...Some unions fear the interests of white union members will be ignored in order to compensate Negroes for past discrimination...

...At a conference between EEOC and the AFL—CIO in May 1966, no union leader would risk the ire of his white members by proposing some type of compromise on this issue...