Rights Bill Will Not Force Quotas, Leading Firms Say : Business: Officials of nine of the nation's largest companies foresee no change in their hiring practices.

By SAM FULWOOD III

June 30, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — Despite the dire warnings of the Bush Administration and business lobbying groups, many of America’s biggest private employers say that passage of the civil rights legislation pending in Congress would not force them to adopt hiring quotas for minorities.

In a series of interviews with The Times, officials at nine of America’s 10 largest industrial corporations said that the adoption of a proposal denounced as a “quota bill” by President Bush would pose no significant problems for their hiring and promotion practices.

According to these firms, a Democratic-sponsored civil rights bill recently approved by the House is not likely to require them to replace existing employment policies with rigid numerical formulas for hiring and promoting women and racial minorities.

“We’re not opposed to any of the legislation,” said IBM Corp. spokesman Mark Holcomb, referring to earlier versions of the civil rights legislation as well as the pending House bill. “It’s not good business to be against affirmative action.”

Declared Jack Batty, a spokesman for General Electric Co.: “We have never hired by quotas, and nothing would make us do so.”

Similar assessments were offered by officials at General Motors Corp., Exxon Corp., Ford Motor Co., Mobil Corp., Texaco Inc., Du Pont & Co. and Chevron Corp.. Along with IBM and General Electric, these firms account for nine of the top 10 spots on the Fortune 500 list and employ a combined total of 2.4 million people. (One of the 10 largest industrial companies, Philip Morris Inc., declined to comment.)

Similarly, executives with a number of other large companies interviewed for this report, including Coca-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble Co., indicated that they were uncomfortable linking their companies with the Bush Administration’s position on the pending civil rights bill.

Some firms, such as Mobil, expressed concerns about the positions of both the Democrats and the Administration on civil rights legislation. Others agreed to talk about the issue only if they and their companies were not identified.

To be sure, these giant corporations, with their large legal staffs and sophisticated personnel policies, may not accurately represent the views of all businesses, particularly small proprietors who cannot afford protracted legal battles. Trade associations representing businesses both large and small say that their members generally oppose the congressional bills, and many executives at the big companies expressed reservations about some details of the legislation.

“We’re a membership organization, so we don’t dream up these positions on our own,” said Randolph Hale, vice president for industrial relations at the National Assn. of Manufacturers, which opposes the congressional civil rights legislation. “We’ve had very few, if any, (companies) tell us our position is wrong.”

But the apparent lack of serious alarm within America’s largest corporations raises questions about the depth of opposition by big business to legislation designed to make it easier for workers to pursue discrimination claims in the courts.

In the eyes of some critics, the opinions expressed by corporate officials suggest that the position of America’s largest companies is being misrepresented by the Bush Administration and their own lobbying organizations.

The dispute involves perhaps the most politically charged and divisive issue facing Congress this year, one that could aggravate already strained race relations in America and reverberate in next year’s national elections.

A series of 1989 Supreme Court decisions made it more difficult for workers to sue employers for alleged workplace discrimination. The Democratic-sponsored bill to reverse those decisions was approved by the House after its members rejected a stronger measure favored by black lawmakers and a weaker bill backed by the Administration. Senate Democrats have been working with moderate Republicans to craft a compromise bill that would be acceptable to Bush, although the effort appeared to stall late last week.

The House measure proposes several key changes in existing law. It would allow women to receive discrimination damage awards for the first time and would allow juries to pass judgment on job bias cases that can be heard only by judges under current law.

But the provisions that have stirred the most vocal opposition would place a greater burden of proof on employers to justify policies that appear on their face to be neutral but have the effect of excluding or limiting the number of minorities the companies hire and promote.

If, for example, a company requires that job applicants possess a college degree, the percentage of minority candidates would be considerably smaller than in the population at large. The Democratic bill would require the firm, if sued, to show that the requirement is necessary to ensure adequate job performance. The Administration agrees that the burden should be shifted back to employers but wants a less stringent standard.

The Administration’s opposition to the congressional bill is based on its contention that if it passes, corporate lawyers would advise their bosses to impose rigid quotas for hiring and promoting minorities to protect themselves against discrimination lawsuits.

Major business lobbying groups--led by the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business--have joined the Administration in opposing the congressional legislation.

Despite the appearance of a united business front, however, none of the corporate officials interviewed fully supported the Administration’s assertion that the Democrats’ civil rights measure is little more than a “quota bill” in disguise. While most were reluctant to state an official corporate position on the pending legislation, they also sought to distance themselves from the Administration’s strong antagonism toward the bill.

Richard Cohen, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Birmingham, Ala., noted a growing realization among business leaders that the nation’s future work force will be disproportionately made up of women and minorities. This demographic fact, more than all the legal and moral arguments swirling around the civil rights debate, undergirds corporate support for affirmative action programs and firms’ wariness to embrace the Administration’s restrictive position, he said.

While many corporate officials were reluctant to criticize the Administration, some of their comments undermine the White House argument that the heavier burden of proof proposed by the congressional bill would force them to begin hiring based on numbers, not merit or ability.

“I’m not jumping on the bandwagon to say that will happen,” said Dick Drach, an affirmative action manager at Du Pont. “To my knowledge, the burden of proof was on us before (the Supreme Court rulings). We have not lost cases strictly on the basis of our numbers.”

Drach said that if the Democratic bill becomes law, it would take a series of court rulings endorsing quotas as a legitimate defense against discrimination suits before employers would adopt them on a widespread basis, a possibility many consider unlikely. “It (the use of quotas) would have to be upheld by the courts,” Drach said. “I don’t think that would happen.”

Several corporate officials noted that their firms did not use quotas before the series of Supreme Court decisions two years ago, and they saw no reason why they would need to do so if the law is restored to its pre-1989 status.

Texaco spokesman Jim Swords said that his firm made no changes in its employment policies and procedures in response to the high court rulings. “We’re conducting business as we had previously,” he said.

John Maciarz, personnel and development manager at General Motors in Detroit, said that the giant auto maker has a decade-old affirmative action program and expects that it will remain in place for decades to come, no matter which side prevails in Congress this year.

“We don’t have quotas,” Maciarz said flatly. “We have goals. We feel our affirmative action program is doing what we intended for it to do, and that is to ensure we provide employment opportunities for all (population) groups.”

The bill’s supporters said that the relatively benign assessment of the pending legislation by these companies proves their contention that the Administration has been employing the quota issue as a smoke screen in the civil rights debate.

“These reports confirm what we in the civil rights community have said all along, that the Administration has been using the quota issue as an unfair and demagogic issue intended to inflame white voters and a sophisticated form of race-baiting,” said Wade Henderson, director of the Washington office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

At the same time, many of the business officials acknowledged that they were reluctant to argue openly for passage of the Democratic civil rights bill. Some said that their silence stemmed, in large measure, from the inflammatory and divisive language employed by both sides in the debate over civil rights.

Politically charged words like “quotas” and “reverse discrimination” have become common currency among the attorneys and politicians arguing the merits of civil rights laws. Such terms make corporate executives wary of a possible backlash from customers and employees no matter which side a company endorses publicly.

“The rhetoric is so damn hot,” said one corporate executive, who requested anonymity. “A lot of political jockeying is going on, and there’s nothing we could say or do that would be in our best interest. So we’re remaining mum until the matter is settled.”

That opinion was echoed by Lou Camardo, equal employment planning manager at Ford in Dearborn, Mich. “We have tried to stay away from the fray,” he said. “Businesses have tried to remain removed from (the debate on the civil rights bill) and to attend to the business of business, which in my case is to create some balance in our work force.”

Hale, the National Assn. of Manufacturers vice president, said he believes that the business leaders who shared their views with The Times actually oppose the Democratic bill but are afraid to say so, fearing a backlash of bad publicity orchestrated by minority groups.

“What colors some companies’ public statements is that they’re a consumer-goods corporation, and they have to be careful about their public statements,” Hale said. “They’re worried about boycotts.”

Civil rights groups recently demanded that the Fair Employment Coalition, a group formed in 1990 to lobby against civil rights legislation, reveal the identities of its approximately 200 members. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a key supporter of the Democrats’ legislation, read into the Congressional Record the names of firms associated with the coalition, a move interpreted by some as a warning of a potential boycott.

But the NAACP’s Henderson defended the move, saying that the public has a right to know the membership of a coalition seeking to influence public debate on an important issue. He said that the NAACP has not threatened any firm with a boycott because of its views on the legislation. “That charge is inflammatory and without merit,” he said.

Shortly after a 1990 version of the civil rights bill was vetoed by Bush, nearly two dozen members of the Fair Employment Coalition quietly withdrew, apparently worried that the increasingly polarized debate might affect their relationship with customers and employees. Some of those firms joined an aborted effort to craft a compromise with civil rights leaders on the 1991 version of the bill.

Seeking to avoid a replay of last year’s divisive debate, the Business Roundtable, another coalition of leading U.S. corporations, met with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella organization of civil rights groups, in an effort to find a compromise. That effort was derailed after White House officials and small business leaders complained that the talks undermined the Administration’s strategy to promote its civil rights bill.