Plan on Repeal of Quota Rules Assailed

Civil rights leaders and other critics Thursday roundly condemned a proposal being considered by the Reagan Administration to eliminate longstanding requirements that federal contractors set numerical goals for hiring minorities and women.

If signed by President Reagan, the new order would cover an estimated 23 million workers employed in 77,000 places of business holding federal contracts. Under an order issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, thousands of contracting firms--including some of the nation’s largest businesses--have been forced to hire and promote minorities and women or face losing the government’s business.

A proposed new order now is on the agenda of the Domestic Policy Council, headed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, but has not yet reached President Reagan, according to White House spokesman Larry Speakes. No date for action has been set, he said.

Addressing reporters in Santa Barbara, where Reagan is on vacation, Speakes stressed that the proposal was in the early stages of discussion and currently “has no standing whatsoever as Administration policy.”

He reiterated that while the President opposes “numerical quotas,” he still supports “positive affirmative action programs” that remove barriers to equal employment opportunity.

Nonetheless, civil rights groups and employment experts, commenting in the wake of disclosure of the proposal Wednesday, issued strong criticisms of the draft order, saying it would eliminate the government’s most effective tool for detecting discrimination and bring conflict and confusion into ongoing affirmative action programs by business.

“The present policy has been affirmed by the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations,” said Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “Gutting that policy would be a national tragedy.”

Richard T. Seymour, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called the proposal “astonishingly extreme,” saying it would prevent government contract-compliance authorities from considering any statistical evidence to see whether a contractor was guilty of discrimination.

Seymour added that the draft order would even bar requirements for numerical goals in recruitment and training programs--something the Administration thus far has approved, while remaining opposed to goals or quotas in hiring and promotion.

A spokesman for the National Assn. of Manufacturers, representing 13,500 corporations nationwide, declined to comment specifically on the draft order--but reiterated the organization’s general support of affirmative action plans built around voluntary goals and timetables.

“Our members feel that these measures have been very successful in including minorities and women into the work force,” said Jim Conway, NAM’s associate director for human resources and equal opportunity.

Conway also said that the business community would welcome a more cohesive civil rights policy from the Administration. “We think it’s very important that the Administration speak with one voice on this,” he said.

The draft order was reportedly prepared by officials of the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department. Both Meese and Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds have been frequently critical of affirmative action plans that utilize goals or quotas. But Labor Secretary William E. Brock III has been more supportive of affirmative action.

Herbert Hammerman, an employment specialist for the Potomac Institute, said that federally required goals and timetables had become well-established within private business and that the draft order would have a “negative impact.”

“These methods have become a way of doing business,” he said. “They have to some extent given management more control over the hiring and promotion process, reducing the past practice of doing these things largely by habit.”