Irish Conflict an Issue in Decision on Pension Fund

The centuries-old religious conflict in Northern Ireland will spill over into the state Capitol today when advocates for the Catholic minority seek passage of legislation designed to pressure Great Britain into ending job discrimination.

Following on the heels of last year’s successful South Africa divestiture bill, the legislation by Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) could ultimately halt state pension fund investments in U.S. companies that do not agree to abide by a set of anti-discrimination principles in Northern Ireland.

“I don’t want American companies to turn a blind eye to discriminatory practices that would be illegal in this country,” said Hayden, himself a descendant of Irish Catholics. “We can use our pension power to lobby for improved employment practices in Northern Ireland.”

The legislation is strongly opposed by the British government, which argues that it has been working to end discrimination since 1976, when a fair-employment law was enacted in Northern Ireland.

First Hearing Today

The bill, part of a push in California for greater corporate responsibility, will get its first hearing today in the Assembly Committee on International Trade and Governmental Relations. Scores of Irish-Americans are expected to converge on the Capitol in support of the measure.

Hayden and other proponents of the bill point out that the unemployment rate in Northern Ireland is about 20%. However, they say, unemployment among Catholics is twice as high as among the Protestant majority, which controls most of the economy in the tiny province. In recent years, according to Hayden, the jobless rate among Catholics has exceeded 50%.

Two dozen American companies, including General Motors and Ford Motor Co., have operations in Northern Ireland and employ about 11% of the manufacturing work force.

The California public employee and teacher pension systems have invested about $1.3 billion in 16 of those companies, according to officials who manage the funds.

California’s adoption of Hayden’s bill would be a major victory in a nationwide campaign by Irish Catholics to increase pressure on Britain. Similar measures have already become law in New York and Massachusetts--two states that both have large Irish-American populations. Such bills also have been introduced in Congress and in several other states.

British Consul-General Graham Burton, who has personally lobbied members of the Assembly committee to defeat the measure, said he fears that passage of the bill would discourage further investment in troubled Northern Ireland.

“It’s just another deterrent to choosing Northern Ireland and that’s why we’re worried,” Burton said. “Any potential investors in Northern Ireland are going to think, ‘That’s just one more bloody difficulty I’ve got to comply with.’ ”

Burton bristles at the implication of the proposal that Great Britain’s policies in Ulster are anything like the South African system of apartheid, which enforces racial segregation of the black majority. And the British diplomat charged that the bill was inspired by the Irish Republican Army as a way of bringing economic chaos to the region.

“This is a thinly veiled attempt by the IRA to use misguided people in the States--not malicious people, but just misguided people--to pursue a policy that is only in the IRA’s interest,” he said.

The bill is based on a set of nine anti-discrimination guidelines known as the MacBride Principles after Sean MacBride, one of their authors. MacBride, now 83, was the 1974 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a co-founder of Amnesty International and assistant secretary general of the United Nations. But, as Burton said, he was also the winner of the Lenin Peace Prize and was once chief of staff of the IRA.

MacBride’s nine principles include increasing the number of “under-represented religious groups” in the work force, banning provocative religious symbols in the workplace, publicly advertising all job openings, eliminating religious favoritism in layoffs and developing training programs for minority employees.

So far, no U.S. company doing business in Northern Ireland has adopted the principles, an aide to Hayden said.

Hayden said he did not know of any role the IRA played in promulgating the principles, which he said should help bring about peaceful change not contribute to the revolutionary violence advocated by the outlawed IRA.

He also said the bill is specifically drafted not to remove U.S. investment from Northern Ireland--unlike the state’s divestiture law aimed at South Africa.

Under Hayden’s bill, if a state pension system sold stock in a company because it refused to abide by the MacBride Principles, pension managers would be encouraged to reinvest the money in another firm that was also doing business in Northern Ireland.