Must Route to Top Jobs Be Boycott?

Since the assassination of American’s foremost civil-rights leader more than 20 years ago, the self-congratulatory equal-opportunity placards displayed by corporations have become commonplace and, by most accounts, much more prominent.

Perhaps Martin Luther King Day is an appropriate time to state frankly what most minorities want and that apparently most corporations do not yet understand. Minorities want contracts, not contacts. Minorities want to occupy corporate suites, not corporate basements.

The most powerful and prestigious quasi-public corporation in Southern California, SoCal Edison, is an illustration, but by no means a unique example, of the hollowness of the progress that has been made since King’s death or since Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of that Montgomery, Ala., bus.

In 1955 Parks asserted her basic rights. At that time, Edison had no blacks in any key or leadership positions. Thirteen years later, when King was killed, Edison still had no blacks in key management positions. Today this $15-billion publicly held and well-respected corporation still has no blacks in any leadership positions. None of Edison’s top 100 employees are black. Only one of its 275 employees earning more than $75,000 is black, according to recent congressional testimony.

Blacks are not the only minority that has been ignored. Despite the presence of 6.5 million Latinos in California, only two of Edison’s top 275 employees are Latino.

Although Edison’s “segregated” management practices appear to be the worst among major California utilities, it is not unique in corporate America. For example, only one of the top 10 California-based defense contractors has a black on its board of directors. Not one of the top 10 defense contractors has a Latino or Asian director.

Exclusion from management opportunities, 34 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered desegregation of all public schools, is only part of the exclusionary pattern. On the average, major California utilities awarded less than one-half of 1% of their $5 billion in outside contracts to black businesses last year. (Southern California Gas Co. was the only significant exception.)

Defense contractors, despite receiving more than $155 billion in federal contracts in 1987, have a similarly poor record. The typical major contractor provides less than one-half of 1% of contracts to blacks, and even this trivial figure is often inflated by the use of minority fronts controlled by white partners.

Although corporations are often praised for their philanthropy, most concentrate their contributions on the mainstream arts or on safe, non-minority civic organizations. For example, according to data recently filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, SoCal Edison contributed only $43,500 to Latino organizations in 1987, and about the same amount to black organizations. This occurred despite the fact that Edison earned almost $700 million in net profits that year.

I have thought about what King might have said and done under these circumstances. Consistent with his commitment to nonviolence, King might well have considered an economic boycott, like the one that brought Montgomery, Ala., to the negotiating table.

Today the minority community has numerous economic weapons at its disposal. We can ask the Public Utilities Commission to block all utility mergers that violate the public interest, including the pending Edison merger with San Diego Gas & Electric. We can also seek to block rate increases until utility policies reflect the needs and composition of our integrated society.

We can ask Congress to award defense contracts based in part on a company’s affirmative-action record (including employment, management, business opportunities and philanthropic contributions to minorities), in order to give a competitive advantage to those with good records.

In fact, these considerations are no longer just dreams. Minorities have recently filed a legal petition with the Public Utilities Commission and with Congress to help create a modern-day analogue of Martin Luther King’s economic strategy.

I was a teen-ager when Rosa Parks stood firm, and I never doubted. I still don’t.