Labor Dept. Wants to Take On Job Bias in the Executive Suite
By PETER T. KILBORN, Special to The New York Times
Published: July 30, 1990
WASHINGTON, July 29— Even as it is fighting Congress over a major civil rights bill, the Bush Administration says it is looking for a way to curb job discrimination in a realm that the Government has never really touched: the white male echelon that rules the nation's largest corporations.
Women and minority members complain that in climbing the corporate ladder they collide with a ''glass ceiling'' of subtle discrimination that blocks their access to the highest rung. Confirming accounts that have arisen in legal circles here, Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole said last week that she was devising a ''glass ceiling initiative'' to try to speed the promotion of women and minority members to top posts and threatening cancellation of Government contracts with companies that do not cooperate.
Labor Department officials say female, black and Hispanic employees make up 30 percent or more of the middle management of big corporations, but less than 1 percent at the level of the chief executive and those directly beneath.
Lists of Executives Cited
Combing through lists of directors and highest executives at 799 major companies this month, Fortune magazine found 3,993 men and only 19 women. Other studies show smaller proportions of black and Hispanic executives.
Because the Federal policy will not be fully defined until September or October, Mrs. Dole declined requests for interviews about it. In written replies to a reporter's questions, however, she said: ''I have made this issue a top priority, and it will remain so during my service as Secretary of Labor. For me, it is a matter of fairness and equity, born out of personal experience.''
She added, ''There can be little doubt that a woman or minority, no matter how well-schooled, what their wage or how thick their portfolio, enters many business organizations with limited or no hope of reaching the top.''
To discourage practices that limit careers, she said, ''we will be examining developmental programs, training, rotational assignments and reward structures - all the indicators of upward mobility in corporate America.''
Rigid Quotas Opposed
Mrs. Dole's plan seems at odds with the White House's resistance to job discrimination provisions in the civil rights bill that has passed the Senate and is now before the House. The White House calls the bill unacceptable, saying it would force employers to set rigid numerical quotas for hiring and promoting female and minority workers.
But Alixe Glen, a spokeswoman for the President, said Mr. Bush endorsed the general goal of workplace equity. And the Administration seems to have recognized a demographic fact: the relative decline in the number of white men.
Social and Cultural Conditions
As yet it is unclear how far the Labor Department will be able to go in differentiating illegal discrimination, conscious or unconscious, from social and cultural conditions that contribute to the preponderance of white men at the top. Nor is it certain how deeply department investigators can legally dig into a company's affairs. And it is not clear how much Mrs. Dole might commit in money and personnel to the initiative.
But her aides say that at least some patterns of discrimination can readily be found by such tactics as tracing the progress of men, women and minority members through the executive ranks, by examining compensation plans and executive advancement programs and by comparing a company's mix of top executives with those of other companies in similar places and industries.
And the aides note that with two other issues Mrs. Dole has singled out for emphasis, violations of child labor laws and of worker safety regulations, she has been collecting more in penalties for violations than any of her predecessors.
Within the Labor Department, 20 of Mrs. Dole's 32 top executive appointees, or 63 percent, are female, black or Hispanic, second to the Department of Health and Human Services, with 70 percent.
Johnson Executive Order
The department's tool in thwarting discrimination in industry is the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and it is playing tougher than it has in years. The office enforces an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 that prohibits Government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, religion or national origin. The office monitors the affirmative action programs of more than 10,000 companies that have about $200 billion in Federal contracts.
Last year, in its largest financial settlement involving a discrimination case, the contract compliance office won a $14 million back pay award for female and minority employees of the Harris Bank in Chicago.
Now, in trial runs leading to a full-fledged glass ceiling investigation, the Labor Department recently began dispatching investigators to the executive suites of a dozen major companies. Department officials declined to identify them.
At this rarefied level of corporate life, discrimination typically is subtler than the overt obstacles to hiring and promotion that show up at lower levels. Executives may be favored for promotion if they have had foreign assignments, for example, or advanced business courses - opportunities some companies offer only to men.
The Exclusion Factor