NAACP, Gas Co. in Agreement on Plan for Minority Hiring

After eight months of negotiations, Southern California Gas Co. on Tuesday announced that it has reached agreement with the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People on a plan to increase hiring and promotion of blacks and other minorities and to increase purchases from minority-owned businesses.

It is the third time in the last three years that the NAACP’s Los Angeles chapter has obtained corporate endorsement of its so-called “fair share” principles, which call for companies to invest the profits they derive from black consumers back into black communities.

Raymond Johnson, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, praised the gas company as “a good corporate citizen” at a press conference attended by officials of the utility and the civil rights organization.

Warren Mitchell, the gas company’s vice president for human resources, said the company will attempt this year to double the rate at which blacks are promoted into management positions. Currently, blacks make up about 8% of lower-management positions and about 4% of middle- and upper-management jobs.

Set New Goals

Of the gas company’s 10,000 employees, 12.6% are black, 23.9% Hispanic and 5.3% Asian. The goals adopted by the company call for employees hired in 1986 to be 27% black, 35.8% Hispanic and 9.6% Asian.

The company also said that it will make approximately $28-million worth of purchases this year from more than 1,200 firms owned by minorities and females, which represent about 8% of total company procurements--an increase of about 22% over last year.

“We’re very positive about our support” of the fair-share principles, Mitchell said.

The NAACP’s Operation Fair Share, initiated by the organization’s national office in 1981, attempts to win employment, purchasing and policy-making concessions from companies, along with increased donations to minority charitable organizations and consultation with minority groups on corporate policy development.

Effort Began in 1984

NAACP officials said they initially approached the gas company with a request for endorsement of the fair-share principles in 1984, but said negotiations did not begin until last year.

Virna Canson, the NAACP’s western regional director, said she feels that the agreement was achieved within a reasonable time and that the utility’s attitude was cooperative.

That was in sharp contrast to agreements negotiated with the Adolph Coors Co. and McDonald’s Corp. Both those agreements were signed only after leaders of the Los Angeles NAACP called for boycotts of the companies.

In 1984, after a four-month NAACP boycott campaign against Coors beer, the Coors corporation signed a nationwide agreement that called for the company to purchase up to 10% of its goods and services from black-owned businesses and bring more blacks into management positions.

Last year, the NAACP reached agreement with McDonald’s restaurants on a similar pact that calls for the nation’s largest fast-food chain to establish 100 new black-owned restaurants over a four-year period.