Hiring Bias Probe of Show Business Gets Some Results

A special government task force investigating 150 cases of alleged hiring discrimination in the entertainment industry “is beginning to have some impact,” the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday.

Chairman Clarence Thomas said that some cases involving “blackballing”--refusal to hire women, older people and minorities--have been resolved informally and that others are in court.

Thomas, in an interview with a small group of reporters, said that the special probe centers on the West Coast and will be expanded to the East Coast. In addition to the major movie studios, the investigators are focusing on television networks, guilds and unions.

Investigations of the industry previously have been hampered because hiring in movies and television is “so fragmented,” lacking any streamlined employment procedures, Thomas said. But he said that the task force takes a “project-by-project approach” to discrimination charges and that entertainment businesses now “will be subject to the same penalties” as other industries.

Later, in a telephone interview, Leonora L. Guarraia, director of the commission’s district office in Los Angeles, who organized the task force last year, said that those who had charged that they were victims of discrimination have received about $300,000 in individual out-of-court settlements. Guarraia said formal class-action lawsuits will have a more “lasting effect on the industry.”

About 40 of the 150 cases will be brought as class-action suits, she said, adding that the first likely will be filed within six months.

The EEOC investigation stems from years of charges by women, blacks, Asians and Latinos that they have been unable to get jobs either in front of or behind the cameras because of discrimination. Guarraia said women often believe that “they have to go the sexual-favors route to get a part” in a movie.

The agency did not specify which studios or networks might be sued. However, ABC is the target of age discrimination complaints filed with the EEOC, said Guarraia, who refused to elaborate. Last February, the EEOC filed a court petition to force the network to respond to a subpoena for information involving the allegations.

A spokeswoman in ABC’s offices in New York refused to comment on the case.

In another case that surfaced in the EEOC investigation, Guarraia said, a performer won “thousands of dollars” from an unidentified television concern when the EEOC proved that he could portray an Italian in a television production even though he was not Italian.

The EEOC enforces laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, handicap or national origin. However, under the Reagan Administration, the 20-year-old agency has been criticized by civil rights advocates who accuse Thomas of undermining traditional remedies such as goals and timetables in hiring and promotions.

But Thomas, in the wide-ranging interview, dismissed what he called the “shrill debate” over goals and timetables and said his agency is seeking fair treatment for everyone.

He said that a new computer system will make it easier for the EEOC to track corporate offenders nationwide and that his agency is for the first time monitoring policies adopted by employers for hiring and promotion of minorities and women.

To give the public easier access to the EEOC, Thomas announced a nationwide toll-free telephone number: (800) USA-EEOC. Callers will be provided information in English and Spanish about anti-discrimination laws, he said.