Edison’s Great Leap for Equity
Southern California Edison Co. has agreed to place significantly more minorities and women in its highest corporate jobs to make the utility the most thoroughly integrated big firm in the nation. It also will make its decision-makers as diverse as California’s population, a fact that can only make Edison’s policies more responsive to the total community.
In a voluntary agreement negotiated with a broad coalition of minority and women’s groups, Edison pledged to work toward a goal of filling 20% of its top 100 managerial positions with minorities and women by the year 2000. Over the same period, it would work toward filling 30% of its top 500 jobs with minorities and women. Two more minority directors will join the four female and minority directors already on Edison’s 16-member corporate board.
Edison spends $1 billion yearly on goods and services and allocates 20% of that amount to minority and women-owned businesses. The state’s six largest public utilities agreed to the 20% last year in response to affirmative hiring and purchasing legislation authored by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) and to hearings by the Public Utilities Commission.Under Edison’s new policy, the share will growto 30%.
Edison also pledges to increase donations to minority charities. The utility contributed $100,000 to minority philanthropies last year. The donations will triple next year and grow tenfold to $1 million in 10 years, another commitment to equity.
Civil rights groups have tried on and off since 1970 to make some headway with public utility companies, none of which had admirable records on minority hiring, with Edison among the worst. Not much happened until last year, when Howard P. Allen, Edison’s chairman and chief executive officer, met with representatives of major black, Latino, Asian and women’s groups.
The strictly voluntary aspect of Edison’s pact should make it more appealing to other businesses. Edison will also initiate two new training programs to prepare women and minority employees for upward mobility and to teach managers and supervisors a greater sensitivity and a greater responsibility to fairness.
Given California’s changing demographics, Edison’s agreement makes sound business sense. The utility provides a public service to more than 10 million customers--about 44% minorities--in 800 communities in Central and Southern California.
To succeed in a more competitive and increasingly multicultural market, businesses need, as Allen put it, “the best and the brightest” regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. It is also, he said, “the right thing to do.”
Edison’s far-sighted commitment sets a high and admirable standard not only for utility companies but also for all major businesses in California.
