cause of their race."19/ Earlier, the U. S. district court in Boston had found that the use of the GATB to select applicants for jobs such as bus drivers resulted in illegal racial discrimination. 20/ The General Aptitude Test Battery was developed by the Employment Service in the 1940's and has been distributed widely by it for use by schools, employers and others. In 1969 it was given to more than 532,000 applicants. On March 8, 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled that section 703 (h) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permits only such testing as is directly related to the individual's competence for the specfic job sought, and that general ability tests may not be used to exclude minorities -- regardless of the employer's nondiscriminatory intent unless the direct relationship between test performance and job performance is proven. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., U.S. 39 L.W. 4317. This decision should stimulate a careful review of the uses to which routine ES test results are put, as well as thorough examination of the testing done by the ES at the request of employers. The continued reliance on written testing is a clear example of the persistence of the various state agencies in following their own policies, rather than the directives of DOL. The states surveyed for this study had widely contrasting attitudes towards tests. In Michigan testing has been largely eliminated, except for typing and shorthand, while North Carolina reported no substantive changes had been made either in the types of applicants tested or in regulations concerning use of tests. The Texas ES declared that many employers still require results of written testing, so written testing will continue. The Employment Service is now placing greater emphasis on practical job effectiveness trials that do not simply measure cultural experience. Some states have introduced pretest preparation sessions, to screen those applicants for whom a written test would not be appropriate and to prepare others for taking the test. A Spanish language version of the GATB, developed in Puerto Rico and in use there for several years, may be free of some of the deficiencies found in the test versions condemned by the EEOC (if it is sufficiently flexible to be used for Mexican-Americans as well). In February, 1971, the Labor Department announced introduction of a Nonreading Aptitude Test Battery, "oriented particularly toward disadvantaged job applicants with limited literacy achievements."21/ DOL will conduct special training sessions and prepare detailed materials on the administration of the NATB. Its ultimate effectiveness will, like other DOL reforms, depend on the extent to which it is accepted by local staff. 5. Office Organization. We have referred earlier to the fact that in cities where there is no central listing of job openings, ES offices in inner city neighborhoods tend to get inferior listings, and only have access to "stale" listings from other offices. Separate offices for separate classes of jobs are still the predominant pattern in some big cities and it has frequently been observed that the minority clientele of the offices increases as the quality of the jobs listed goes down: virtually the only applicants to be found at Manhattan's center for domestic and service workers are blacks and Puerto Ricans. Until Job Banks or some other form of disseminating current listings is more widely instituted, employers in most cities will be able to choose the race of their ES referrals by choosing the office with which to list their openings. 6. Inadequate Policing: Employer Follow-up. Section 1294 of the Employment Security Manual, revised and made more stringent in 1967, sets forth procedures for dealing with employers suspected of discrimination: referral records must be spot-checked periodically for any apparent discriminatory hiring practices, and the records of employers suspected of discrimination must be closely followed; the ES must refuse to serve employers who place discriminatory referral orders or who refuse to give assurance of future non-discrimination; any discriminatory job specifications must be reported to the appropriate equal opportunity enforcement agency. Beginning in 1969, the local offices were ordered to transmit figures on minority group applications, referrals and placements to Washington for further scrutiny. These procedures have been largely ignored. At the hearings on the Comprehensive Manpower Bill of 1970, Senator Nelson inquired of Mr. Green, Director of the New York State ES, who was testifying on behalf of the Interstate Conference of Employment Security Agencies (ICESA) 22/: The reasons are that there are just too many other statistics for local personnel to keep, and records to check and papers to file. Given the low priority placed upon anti-discrimination activities, the random checks do not get made according to schedule, nor do the lists of suspended employers get circulated among ES offices or even among employees of the same office, nor do all complaints get forwarded to enforcement agencies. And so the ES continues to serve discriminatory employers largely because the offices are pre-occupied with other things. - 7. The ES and the Apprenticeship Programs. One of the most controversial aspects of the fair employment-civil rights effort has been the question of minority entry into unions, particularly the craft unions that control the lucrative construction and skilled labor jobs. The fact that construction is one of the few growth industries in the inner-city 24/ and that salaries within the trades have shot up during the past ten years (by approximately 170%) has led to increasing minority demands for such jobs. The unions, however, have resisted these demands, in part by imposing increasingly onerous apprenticeship requirements. The Labor Department's principal agency for dealing with the manpower aspect of union operations is the Bureau of Apprenticeship Training (BAT). BAT's primary responsibility is to provide technical assistance to unions developing apprenticeship programs, and to register programs that meet certain standards for DOL approval. Registration leads to a broad range of benefits, including the right to pay wages below the statutory minimum during the long period of apprentice training. BAT has been reluctant to pressure the unions into non-discrimination, and in January, 1971, the Solicitor of the Labor Department expressed the fear that BAT registration of numerous discriminatory apprenticeship programs may be in direct violation of the Constitution.25/ The Employment Service system is involved in the effort to desegregate the apprenticeship programs in two ways. First, its Office of National Contracts administers Apprenticeship and Journeymen Outreach Programs, designed to recruit and prepare minority applicants for apprenticeship training. The ES contracts with unions and civic organizations to run the outreach programs, which are monitored by a local BAT representative. In 1-1/2 years, $11.8 million have been committed to these programs; DOL has no figures on the number of minority workers who have entered and completed apprenticeship programs as a result of this investment. In addition, the Employment Service operates Apprenticeship Information Centers (AIC) in 35 cities. This program was launched in November of 1963 as a cooperative BAT-USES effort, "to give a specialized service to [apprenticeship] applicants and industry to utilize the maximum manpower potential in the community and to equalize employment opportunity for apprentices without regard to race, creed, or national origin."26/ The centers are located in cities with substantial minorities in the work force. Their role is primarily promotional and informational; they have no sanctions and feel no special responsibility to minorities seeking access to the lucrative construction jobs. A 1966 evaluation of the program made for the Labor Department found the staff were trying to assuage the union's distrust of the AIC's with assurances of their malleability. The arguments used to placate the unions show why the civil rights movement is scornful of the AIC's. DOL personnel suggested the AIC's were the unions' best alternative: if they supported AIC's they could exercise some control over them and the AIC's would channel qualified blacks into apprenticeships while other training programs bypassed the union programs; AIC's would also screen and reject unacceptable blacks, insulating the unions from charges of discrimination. Moreover, the AIC's involved the least amount of governmental interference in the unions' conduct of apprenticeships.27/ The performance of the AIC's to date has been unimpressive. In 1970, 82% of their reported placements were white. In June 1970, a study of the program was conducted by the Manpower Administration's Division of Program Evaluation. It concluded that in their present form the 35 AIC centers (funded at approximately $35,000 each) were not performing a useful function, that dissemination of information without advocacy and without efforts to "break down discriminatory barriers to entrance in apprenticeship", was useless. Specifically, the report concluded: "[T]he relevance of the present AIC objec- "Most AIC's seem to have had little im- ments for apprentices, and only modest impact The report's most negative finding was the conclusion that the AIC's were not really helping those they were set up to serve - minority applicants. "Most AIC's have achieved a fair measure of " As a measure of the relative lack of success achieved by the AIC's, the report cited census figures showing that over an 8 year period (1960-1968), there has been "only a modest improvement in the minority ratios" in apprenticeship programs.28/ The report placed the blame for the dismal record of the AIC's on the "quality of the AIC staff, or. lack of direction and assistance from BAT the Employment Service, and inflexible and unyielding unions." Elaborating on the performance of the ES, the report..added "rigid and disinterested local ES leadership has also restricted several AICS." The study for the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights pointed out that, as of 1967, only the Washington, D.C. AIC maintained racial data. BAT characterized its efforts to increase apprenticeship integration as "an intangible achievement."29/ The reactions of the state officials contacted in this survey gave the impression that the ES, with a few exceptions, has virtually given up on the important job of placing minority applicants in apprenticeship programs. Some states, like Florida, still keep no information on placement rates. A Louisiana community leader reported that even when minorities are successfully placed, they get "the traditional black jobs --all muscle and no brain." The Massachusetts ES, in reviewing the prospects of its Boston AIC, wrote: "It is planned to continue this effort despite its disappointing results. . . It is estimated that unless conditions change, at least 50 individuals will enter apprenticeship through this center." The one state that did give hard figures on AIC performance, Indiana, has a pretty good record. In 1969, 22.5% of the referrals from the Gary and Indianapolis AIC's were minorities; 24.2% of these were actually enrolled in apprenticeship |