Martin should fight job bias

The beauty of Labor Secretary Lynn Martin's Aug. 8 "glassceiling" initiative was in its timing. Nobody can accuse her offailing to recognize that discrimination is alive and well incorporate America, now that study after study is saying the samething.

Women and minorities are indeed held back by discrimination,according to yet another survey of Fortune 500 companies, releasedSunday.

The trouble with Martin's strategy for dealing with outrightviolations of Executive Order 11246, which bans employers withfederal contracts from discriminating, is in her breezy confidencethat those naughty boys will do the right thing, now that she's askedthem to.

That view has also been expressed by Peter J. Eide, manager oflabor law for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "When the secretary oflabor says something, people listen," he said two weeks ago.

But the new data show very little improvement in the past 25years, despite the threat of sanctions under the executive order.Several recent Supreme Court rulings have made it more difficult forwomen and minorities to bring discrimination lawsuits. And Eide, whohas yet to admit the existence of a glass ceiling, said again Sundaythat women are "being given" higher positions all the time.

Martin's own findings, based on a selective Labor Departmentanalysis of 94 firms, found only 6.6 percent of the executive slotsfilled by women and 2.6 percent by minorities in 1990. A moreexhaustive study of the top 500 firms, by researchers at theUniversity of Southern California, paints an even gloomier picture:Women held only 2.6 percent of the top jobs, when top was defined as"vice president or above," and 4.5 percent of the corporate boardseats in 1990, it found. And women at the top earned 42 percent lessthan their male peers.

And don't go thinking that boards are integrating faster thanexecutive suites, warns Eleanor Smeal, president of the FeministMajority Foundation, which released the findings Sunday. "When youlook at the actual names, you find the same token woman sitting on 10corporate boards," she said.

Without vigorous enforcement of the federal order, the reportestimates, basing its conclusions on women's rate of ascent duringthe past 25 years, it will take another 475 years for women toachieve anything like parity in top management.

The administration apparently is not even considering vigorousenforcement. Asked if she would deny federal contracts to companiesthat discriminate, as she is empowered to do, Martin said two weeksago that she is "not going to go after employers with a 500-poundhammer." She will encourage voluntary efforts with publicrecognition for those making changes, she said, to the dismay ofanybody who'd been hoping for more than lip service.

Martin's disavowal of the 500-pound hammer approach could makethings even worse for women and minorities by signaling employers,who need no longer fear the loss of their multimillion-dollargovernment contracts, to quit worrying. "What she's really saying tocorporate America," Smeal said, "is, we will do nothing if youdiscriminate."

This was, in effect, what the last administration said, when itcame out against affirmative action. But the last administrationnever admitted it had evidence of continuing discrimination or hadfailed to enforce its own rules.

This one has.

Carole Ashkinaze is a member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorialboard.