Minorities Target Defense Industry : Parity on Lucrative Contracts Among Coalition’s Goals

Angry over being excluded from a meeting between congressmen and defense industry representatives, a coalition of eight minority groups Thursday proposed their own plan to ensure that minorities get more economic benefit from the nation’s $150-billion-a-year defense expenditures.

Coalition members, who publicly confronted Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles) about the closed meeting held earlier Thursday in Los Angeles, said they support Hawkins’ efforts to force the industry to provide more jobs and advancement opportunities to minorities. But they said Hawkins’ proposals do not go far enough.

‘Lack of Philanthropy’

The coalition’s plan includes a proposal for Congress to require that defense contractors strive to give 20% of their subcontracting work to businesses owned by women and members of minorities. They also proposed:

Fuller disclosure of the race and ethnicity of the highest-paid defense industry executives and the racial and ethnic composition of members of their boards of directors.

That the affirmative action records of bidders for defense contracts be a key consideration in awarding those contracts.

That Congress require major contractors to annually disclose their charitable contributions, particularly contributions to organizations that serve minorities and the poor.

The defense industry “has a poor record regarding philanthropy, particularly in light of (the profit) they generate from tax dollars,” said Robert Gnaizda, an attorney with Public Advocates, the San Francisco law firm representing the coalition.

The Minority/Women’s Coalition includes representatives of Asian, black and Latino groups. It previously won minority contract concessions from California public utilities and helped negotiate an affirmative action agreement with the Bank of Tokyo for its California First Bank unit that has been hailed as a model plan.

Hawkins, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has proposed plugging loopholes in the federal contract compliance law designed to ensure that contractors do not discriminate. He has also proposed that $800 million a year be raised from defense contractors to help educate minorities for defense jobs. The funds would be raised by requiring contractors to contribute 0.5% of the value of each federal contract to the fund.

Hawkins said he intended to meet Thursday morning at the California Museum of Science and Industry with the corporate officials and with minority representatives in the afternoon to obtain their reaction to his proposal. Coalition members said they learned of the session Monday and did not realize that any part of the meeting would be closed.

Hawkins left the session with the corporate representatives to interrupt a news conference being held by coalition members outside the meeting room. “It seems you have a grave misunderstanding of the purpose of this meeting,” the congressman said.

Though committee members Reps. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park) and Major R. Owens (D-New York) were included in the meeting, Hawkins said it was not a public hearing. He described it as a “conference” with a format that he decided upon as the best way to get information in an orderly fashion.

“The idea is to clarify,” Hawkins said, “not to have a bashing of individuals or a debate.”

Hawkins’ aides said that, in addition to representatives of defense contractors, including Lockheed, Northrop and General Dynamics, that representatives of other kinds of companies attended, including representatives of United Telecom, California Federal Savings & Loan, Pacific Gas & Electric and Times Mirror, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. The aides said the congressmen were interested in a general corporate response to the concept.

Hawkins refused to allow a coalition member into the morning session to “listen” to the corporate viewpoint. “Can we not be part of that?” demanded Alex Esclamado, president of the Filipino American Political Assn. “Our complaint is that these corporations are being shielded from us.”

The coalition has been unsuccessful in getting officials of major defense contractors to meet with them, Gnaizda said. Only Hughes Aircraft has indicated a willingness to consider a meeting, he said.

A key part of the coalition’s strategy in bringing pressure on defense contractors is to highlight the disproportionately high representation of minorities in the front-line military defense of the nation and the relatively meager role they play in defense decisions and profits. The coalition, calling its proposals a defense “efficiency” plan, argues that unfair treatment of minorities is counterproductive to the nation.

Forty percent of Californians in the military services are minority members, said Gilbert Guevara, executive secretary of the American GI Forum, a Latino veterans group. That virtually no blacks and Latinos are among the highest-paid defense industry managers is “embarrassing and unacceptable,” he said.

“In the long run, these exclusionary policies will weaken American resolve and morale and cannot adequately be explained to those who so gallantly serve our nation in faraway and often desolate places.”