Hughes, TRW Job Bias Complaints Aired

A congressional hearing into job discrimination in the aerospace industry was marked Friday by sharp exchanges over the promotion policies of several of Southern California’s biggest companies in the field, particularly regarding their black employees.

Testimony before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor in the Commerce City Hall indicated that groups of employees at two companies--Hughes Aircraft and TRW--have become outspoken recently against company practices affecting minorities.

It was disclosed, for instance, that 29 members of TRW’s security force recently petitioned for a change in the promotion policies affecting minorities. A TRW official testified that the security department at the firm now has new management that “is working closely with employees to understand what is going on.”

Meanwhile, a Hughes official acknowledged that after complaints were made about a Los Angeles-area Hughes manager displaying a Confederate flag in his office, the manager had been reprimanded and told to remove it. The official said the manager is now working at a Hughes facility in South Carolina.

Rep. Augustus Hawkins (D-Los Angeles) remarked that he believes that such a display in the face of black employees would no longer go over well, even in South Carolina.

40 Employees at Hearing

Much attention was focused on Hughes after about 40 of its employees, both black and white, took a day off of work to attend the hearing, chaired by Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park) of the employment opportunities subcommittee. Hawkins chairs the full labor committee.

The Hughes employees applauded two of their number who testified that they had secured promotions only after filing formal complaints with government authorities, as well as a former employee who accused the company of firing him on spurious sexual harassment charges after he had repeatedly sought a promotion. All three were black.

A company official, David R. Barclay, Hughes vice president of human resources development, was booed by the employees when he told the subcommittee that the corporate headquarters at Hughes has set “no overall goals” for promoting minorities into the ranks of upper management, but had left it to the separate facilities to set goals.

Barclay submitted a prepared statement showing that between 1966 and 1986, while Hughes’ total work force was increasing from 31,179 to 73,926, the number of its black employees was increasing from 1,178 to 6,778, the number of Asians from 718 to 6,736, the number of American Indians from 37 to 316, the number of Latinos from 1,171 to 7,721 and the number of women from 8,329 to 26,090.

Managerial Figures Given

Of the company’s 12,843 officials and managers in 1986, a total of 2,079 were members of minority groups as compared to 141 of the 3,820 officials and managers in 1966, he said. And 1,784 were women in 1986, as compared to 74 in 1966.

Martinez and Hawkins said that such statistics can be misleading because they do not distinguish between managerial ranks.

Martinez remarked that while the issue for minorities and women used to be “getting in the door” of big corporations, the issue now is “once in the door . . . will they move up?”

Willis Edwards, president of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood chapter of the NAACP, said his group had recently undertaken an investigation of Hughes after receiving 250 complaints of minority employees being stymied in promotions.

“When you’re black, you have to be the super-black to get ahead at the company,” Edwards said.

In an exchange involving another aerospace firm, Douglas Aircraft, Martinez said he had been given information that fewer blacks currently hold management positions at that company than was the case in 1980. “It’s a minus in upward mobility,” he said.

But this was challenged by Kristine Robinson, Douglas’ manager of equal opportunity programs. She said her figures indicated a steady growth of black and other minority managers.

The hearing continues this morning, with representatives of several other companies scheduled to be heard.