Page images
PDF
EPUB

and other programs specifically require new job opportunities for members of minority groups living in the areas affected by new public construction.

(6) Finally, it should be noted that, throughout the Nation, much of the test of what happens to the major recommendations made in the report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders will be decided in the construction industry and in the Nation's housing and urban development programs. The employment practices of the building and construction trades have unique social implications, especially for black workers, and if the recommendations of the report have any meaning at all, it will be to a large extent revealed by the future status of black workers in the construction industry.

During 1963, 1964, and 1965 the Nation witnessed demonstrations by black workers at public construction sites in many cities across the country. These demonstrations had only one purpose: To get the laws against racial discrimination in employment on public works contracts enforced. Although these demonstrations did not succeed in their purpose, the demonstrations did provoke many official investigations of the pattern of racial exclusion in the building industry and in the construction trades unions.

Among the many groups that conducted such studies were a special committee of the 1965-1967 California general assembly, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, the New York and New Jersey State Advisory Committees to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the New York State Commission for Human Rights, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and the Philadelphia, Newark, New York City and New Rochelle Commissions on Human Rights. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held hearings in San Francisco, Cleveland and other cities which further documented the pattern of Negro discrimination in the building trades. All these studies reached three general conclusions:

(1) Negroes are virtually excluded from construction as apprentices and journeymen, except in the lower paid unskilled and semi-skilled jobs because of union restrictions and widespread racial discrimination by the AFL-CIO building trades craft unions.

(2) Contractors have allowed the unions to control access to jobs through union hiring halls and other forms of union controlled referral systems that limit job openings to union members.

(3) Government officials at all levels have failed or refused to enforce the laws against employment discrimination in public construction.

In the construction industry, trade union racial practices are the decisive factor in determining the status of Negro workers. The basic operational characteristic of craft unions in the building and construction trades is that they control access to employment by virtue of their rigid control of the hiring process. In this industry labor unions control the assignment of union members to jobs. The refusal to admit Negroes into membership denies Negro workers the opportunity to secure employment. Quite frequently Negro craftsmen denied union membership are totally excluded from work in white residential neighborhoods, in new commercial construction and in public works projects. This means that skilled black workers are restricted to marginal maintenance and repair work within the Negro community and that they are seldom permitted to work on the larger and more desirable public and private construction projects.

The building trades unions permit only limited apprenticeship openings in the nationwide construction industry each year and maintain a ratio of one apprentice to eight journeymen. This is an arbitrary number based upon the restrictive anti-social practices of the craft unions. Recent findings by the Federal courts in several States and by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission indicate that no significant alteration in the pattern of racial exclusion in the union controlled construction industry has taken place.

The response of the AFL-CIO building trades unions in Seattle, Wash., in the case of Lewis and Murray v. Ironworkers Local 86 is typical of the current national pattern. On March 12, 1969, the Washington State Board against Discrimination, after almost 3 years of investigation, hearings, and futile attempts at conciliation found a 66 history and record of deliberate, extensive and illegal discrimination practices by respondent union. . ." and ordered the admission of the Negro plaintiffs. The defendant union has refused to comply with the order of the State commission and has laid the foundation for a series of appeals to State and Federal courts that will take a minimum of 3 years.

The attorney general of New York State recently filed charges of racial dis. crimination against Local 501 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical

Workers in Westchester County and complaints against this and other building trades unions in Buffalo and elsewhere are currently pending with the New York State Commission for Human Rights.

A 1968 survey of 21 crafts in Detroit reveals that black workers constitute only four percent of those admitted to union membership in the construction trades, and most of these are concentrated in the "trowel trades" and carpenters union. Furthermore, Negroes constitute only three percent of those enrolled in union apprenticeship programs. This data clearly indicates that no significant change has occurred in the racial composition of the building trades in Detroit during the last decade. Other information reveals that the same situation prevails in many other areas of Negro population concentration.

Significantly, an ethnic survey study made by the California Department of Industrial Relations released during February of 1969 reveals that the proportion of Negroes among apprentices throughout the State of California dropped fourteen percent between 1965 and 1968 while the proportion of MexicanAmericans decreased seventeen percent during the same period.

In Chicago where there are a million Negroes, the taxpayers pay for the Washburne Trade School, but the unions decide what students can enter this public school as part of their apprentice training For years Negroes made up less than one percent of the student body because the unions denied them entry. Today after court contests, civil rights protests, newspaper exposés, and efforts by the school board, there are 167 Negro students among the 2,958 pupils, but many of them were brought in under so-called "open enrollment"-they are not part of the union apprenticeship program and they get a diploma instead of a union job.

...

A nationwide survey of union racial practices published by Look magazine in November, 1968 noted that there were but 58 black apprentices in twentysix trades throughout the entire State of Massachusetts. The report noted that "union control of apprenticeship programs remains a major bar to black progress the situation in Massachusetts is typical of what such exclusionary practices achieve: of 137 structural iron worker apprentices in the Bay State, none is black; of 661 electrician apprentices, eight are black; of 300 plumber apprentices, eleven are black; of 353 sheet metal worker apprentices, none is black; of 256 pipe fitters, one is black; of 167 newspaper-compositor apprentices, one is black."

Prior to the passage of title VII the equal employment opportunity section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, labor unions used their extensive powers to eliminate or limit black workers as a group from competition in the labor market by a variety of methods. Among these were: exclusion from membership by racial provisions in union constitutions or ritual by-laws; or exclusion of Negroes by tacit agreement in the absence of written declarations; segregated locals; separate racial seniority and promotional provisions in union contracts limiting Negro workers to menial or unskilled jobs; refusal to admit Negroes into union controlled apprenticeship training programs; and denial of access to únion hiring halls and other job referral operations especially where such systems of job control are the exclusive source of employment.

These and other discriminatory practices by major trade unions in conjunction with the racial practices by employers, have had a cumulative effect in forming the occupational characteristics of the Negro labor force in the United States.

Although some isolated progress has occurred, the broad patterns of racial discrimination remain intact. But two new phenomena have emerged: where once they were openly racist and acknowledged to be such, these practices have now become covert and subtle. New testing devices and non-job related qualifications, although nondiscriminatory on their face, exclude Negroes just as effectively as did the "white only" clauses in the past. Separate racial seniority provisions in union contracts which once were clearly designated as "white" and "colored" lines of promotion now continue to operate through a series of euphemisms which mean exactly the same thing. The nomenclature has changed but the consequences for black workers remain the same.

The second new development is to be found in the way many labor unions have responded to the requirements of the new body of law prohibiting discriminatory racial practices, in the use of what has become known as "tokenism," that is, a means of preserving old patterns and as a tactic to evade genuine compliance with the law.

Since July 2, 1965, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has received and processed approximately 300 complaints against building trades unions. And in a majority of these, the Commission has found "reasonable cause" to credit the allegations of the complaint. The Justice Department has filed lawsuits charging a pattern of discrimination against 16 building trades unions and one building trades council of the AFL-CIO, and an additional number of private suits are pending in U.S. district courts in cities across the country. In some important cases the courts have already issued decisions in which the unions were found guilty of discriminatory racial practices. But although, now for the first time, the Federal courts are providing clear legal definitions of what constitutes racial discrimination in employment, administrative remedies still are blocked as many labor unions continue their defiance of the law and attempt to defend their traditional racist practices in complex court challenges. The legal departments of many labor unions are now busily engaged in introducing a tangle of procedural legal questions in an attempt to prevent change by a rear guard holding action in the courts. This must be regarded as a basic measure of the federation's policy, more significant than the oft-repeated but empty pledges of "non-discrimination" by the leadership of the American Federation of Labor and its affiliated unions.

Investigations and hearings held by the First Federal Fair Employment Practices Committee in the 1940s involved major building trades unions. One cannot but be fascinated by the current findings of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the decisions of the Federal courts in cases involving construction unions across the country, in the light of the historical record. If one reads the complaints of the 1940s and the complaints of the 1960s one is forced to conclude, in the perspective of time, that the only thing that has changed is the names of the plaintiffs. Time does not permit a comprehensive examination of the many cases involving the building trades unions. However, one case must be mentioned as it is typical of many.

On September 13, 1968 in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, Ohio, Judge Timothy S. Hogan ruled that Anderson L. Dobbins, a Negro electrician, must. be admitted to Local 212, a "lily white" local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO. Local 212 has jurisdiction in Cincinnati and in 13 surrounding counties in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Mr. Dobbins, a veteran of the United States Army, who holds a bachelor of science degree from Hampton Institute and who is a fully certified journeyman electrician, has been attempting to gain admission into Local 212 of the electrician's union since 1949. Because he had been repeatedly denied membership in the union, which maintains an exclusive hiring hall system in the Greater Cincinnati Area, Mr. Dobbins has not been permitted to work in the vast new public and private construction projects in and around Cincinnati.

Spokesmen for organized labor have repeatedly stated, both publicly and privately, that Negroes are not refused admission into the craft, unions because of their race and color but because they are "not qualified." But Federal Judge Hogan found that in spite of the fact that Anderson L. Dobbins was a college graduate, had successfully passed a journeyman's certifying test, and had a wide range of experience as an electrician, he was still refused union membership and thereby the right to work in his craft.

In a ninety page opinion rendered by Judge Hogan in Dobbins vs. Local 212, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, the Federal court ordered that because of Mr. Dobbins' extensive training and experience in the electrical field he must be admitted into union membership immediately: That he must not be required to pass a union qualifying journeyman's Admission Examination and that he must be placed on the union's referral list as of the time he last applied for union membership, which was in September, 1965.

It should also be noted that in this landmark ruling the court found that the union had committed eleven separate acts of racial discrimination, that there was a clear pattern of racial discrimination under the terms of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a violation of an 1866 civil rights statute which prohibits private as well as public discrimination. The Federal court noted that Local 212 had limited its membership to white persons only and that it "effectively controls who will work on union construction within its jurisdiction" through the referral system and hiring hall arrangements it had established. Of great significance is the fact that the court challenged the union's control of employment through its hiring hall and suspended the union referral system. Significantly this case like so many others represents a continuity of complaints by

black workers that began in the 1940s when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 establishing the first Federal FEPC.

At present there are lawsuits pending in U.S. District Courts against building trades unions charging discrimination in refusing to admit Negro journeymen and in the exclusion of Negroes from union controlled apprenticeship programs in clear violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Among these are: The Asbestos Workers in New Orleans, the Electrical Workers Union in Cleveland, the Ironworkers in Cincinnati, the Steamfitters Union in Los Angeles, the Plumbers and Pipefitters in Indianapolis, the Electrical Workers in Las Vegas, the Ironworkers in Chicago, the Lathers Union in New York City, the Plumbers Union in Cleveland and in Columbus, Ohio, where the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently filed the first contempt action under title VII against Plumbers Union Local 189, which violated an agreement to cease discriminatory racial practices in its job referral system. Some of these suits were brought by the U.S. Attorney General, others were brought by Negro workers in private actions. Although there has been a plethora of press conferences and press releases pledging new affirmative action programs to end the shameful pattern of Negro exclusion from union membership and from union controlled apprenticeship training programs, the pattern is not altered. At best there has been a shift from total exclusion in certain crafts to mere tokenism. Craft union officials now permit one or two conspicuous Negroes into membership as journeymen or into union-controlled apprenticeship programs as a strategic minimal adjustment to the requirements of Federal Civil Rights Laws and Executive Orders. Now there must be a new standard of compliance with the comprehensive body of civil rights laws and Executive orders. It must be recognized that the basis of determining progress must be the number of American citizens who are still discriminated against, rather than the number of persons in jobs that were not there last year, or five years ago, or ten years ago.

After more than a quarter of a century of court suits, of complaints filed with Federal and State civil rights agencies, after interminable conferences that are exercises in futility, after mass protests and picket lines at public construction sites, after the arrests and jail sentences of those who seek the enforcement of the legal prohibitions against racial discrimination in employment and after the repeated failure of government agencies to secure compliance with Federal executive orders that explicitly prohibit racial discrimination in public construction, the time has come for public agencies to operate with basic new approaches in order to fulfill the black workers' quest for job equality in the construction industry.

The building trades craft unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO are in reality narrow, restrictive protective associations, obsessed with job control and arbitrarily restricting the supply of skilled labor. Thus, the construction craft unions have more in common with medieval guilds than with labor unions operating within the context of a twentieth century industrial society, whose future stability is threatened by great racial crisis. No longer can public agencies permit what is essentially a private sovereignty to exercise vast powers that have harmful consequences for the entire society. I therefore make the following recommendations:

(1) Wherever public funds are used for construction, the government agency awarding contracts will establish the principle that before a contractor is eligible to bid on a construction or other contract, it be demonstrated that the contractor has an integrated labor force. Furthermore, that any prospective contractor having a collective bargaining agreement requiring that union hiring halls be the exclusive source of labor supply be ruled ineligible to bid on public works contracts. Such exclusive hiring hall provisions virtually guarantee that few, if any black workers will be employed in the skilled-craft occupations. The notion of passive nondiscrimination is obsolete. Now there must be deliberate, systematic, positive action to make certain that black workers are employed in all job classifications on public construction in advance of contract bidding. The alternative is the hoax of "paper compliance" that has characterized this industry's immunity from law enforcement.

(2) All public agencies awarding contracts be required to establish that labor agreements stipulate a specific number of black workers to be employed in each craft at every state of construction. The proportion specified in the labor agreement to reflect the racial composition of the community. This social specification to be enforced at least as conscientiously as the structural and architectural criteria. Unfortunately there has been much public distortion of the finding by

the Comptroller General of the United States in the matter of so-called Manning tables. A careful examination of all the relevant documents reveals that at no time did the finding of the Comptroller General require the scrapping of a prequalification procedure. At issue was the legal necessity to inform the contractor before bids were made of the requirement for Manning tables.

(3) Special consideration to be given to black-owned construction companies in bidding procedures. Throughout the Nation consortiums of black-owned construction companies have been formed which are now effectively in operation. The NAACP has directly sponsored a nationwide consortium of Negro-owned companies entitled the National Afro-American Builders, Inc. These Negro-owned and controlled enterprises employ over ninety five percent of the skilled black craftsmen in the building trades. Giving a preferential status to black contractors is the only realistic way of guaranteeing that a substantial number of black craftsmen will be employed on model cities and other publicly funded construction.

(4) Government agencies must remove private, that is, union control of the operation of apprenticeship training programs in the skilled craft occupations. The social consequences of the operation of these programs are much too broad and pervasive to permit private interest groups to impose their restrictive controls in the operation of such programs. A system of objective standards must be established as the basis for admission into such programs and it is necessary that impartial public agencies determine eligibility for admission into apprenticeship training programs. Testing procedures are now effectively used to exclude large numbers of Negroes from union apprenticeship programs, therefore, an impartial public agency must administer uniform standardized tests. Such tests should be job related and not based upon irrelevant subjective considerations that have their basis in middle class, white social experience, thus blocking off the black applicant whose social and cultural development takes place within the Negro ghetto. Municipalities, States and the Federal Government in conjunction with private agencies such as the NAACP, the Urban League and Negro churches must conduct intensive affirmative campaigns to recruit Negro youth for involvement in apprenticeship and other job training programs.

Periodically the public relations spokesmen for the building trades unions issue dubious statistical information in an attempt to refute charges of discrimination. This is frequently done by lumping together the membership figures of both the skilled crafts unions which are completely white and the membership figures of the union of unskilled workers which are predominantly Negro. Thus they equate the membership of the virtually all-black housewreckers union with that of the highly skilled all-white ironworkers or steamfitters locals. Using this device the building trades unions frequently publicize undifferentiated membership information that is deliberately calculated to mislead the public.

This is especially true of recent reports of so-called "progress" regarding the admission of members of minority groups into apprenticeship training programs. But we are not told which so-called "minorities" have gone into what apprenticeship programs. My own investigations suggest that the majority of these have gone into apprenticeship training in the carpenters and trowel trades jurisdictions where historically there has been a large concentration of Negroes, but very few in the highly skilled craft union jurisdictions which remain "lily white."

The NAACP's demand is for job equality for Negro citizens in the highly skilled, well-paid craft jurisdictions which have been traditionally "lily-white." We are not arguing about unskilled low-paying menial "dead end" jobs which have in fact always been open to Negroes and in which Negroes continue to be concentrated. Negroes have always been common laborers. But Negroes have not been accepted as union plumbers, steamfitters, electricians, sheet metal workers, operating engineers, millwrights, lathers, elevator conductors or mechanics in the skilled craft occupations.

Representatives of organized labor have frequently stated that unemployment among unionized white workers prevents the immediate integration of the labor force and that Negro workers must wait for some far distant future when there is full employment in order to be admitted into union controlled apprenticeship training programs or as journeymen into union membership. The assumption that all the white union members must first be fully employed before Negroes can be permitted to work, the notion that white workers have a prior right to a job is clearly an expression of the racist mentality within the craft unions. Unfortunately, it is also shared by too many public officials. These

« PreviousContinue »