How One Firm Copes With Affirmative Action : Workplace: Archive Corp. has trained its managers to deal with civil rights issues and follows up with close monitoring.

The debate in Congress about proposed civil rights legislation reflects a wide-ranging struggle--between Republicans and Democrats, minorities and whites, liberals and conservatives, and women and men.

On an abstract level, the question centers on whether businesses should be color blind in their hiring or attempt to remedy past injustices by hiring and promoting women and minorities at the expense of white males.

It engenders impassioned arguments. Conservatives say the proposed changes would force employers to defend against discrimination lawsuits by adopting quotas. Liberals say the change is needed to counterbalance the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative shift on civil rights.

But little attention is paid to how civil rights policies--from affirmative action and anti-discrimination rules--are applied by corporate America.

A look at Archive Corp., a manufacturer of computer storage backup systems in Costa Mesa with 2,800 employees in several states and abroad, illustrates how one Southern California company grapples with civil rights issues on a day-to-day basis.

Affirmative action experts say Archive’s representation of minorities and women is good--nearly half of its work force consists of women or minorities. But, as with much of corporate America, there is room for improvement, particularly in its management circles.

Company officials and outside observers doubt that pending civil rights legislation--which would amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964--would force dramatic changes at Archive. But they express concern that it could result in quotas.

“I’m not certain exactly what effect the law could have on us,” said Tag Merrick, general counsel at Archive. “It could create a burden on the company by putting pressure on us to make sure the minority representation is on the level of the general population.”

To ensure that the company complies with existing law, Archive’s watchdogs are its human resources managers, legal counsel and several outside professional consultants and attorneys. The civil rights policies they make can succeed or fail, depending on how well they are adopted by individual managers and communicated to employees.

For some of these enforcers, making sure the company is fair to all employees is simply a matter of good business or making the most of a diverse work force. For others, carrying out the task is a matter of conscience. And a few may do it reluctantly because it keeps them out of legal trouble.

Dwight Smith, an associate counsel for Archive, does not consider the record-keeping required under affirmative action to be burdensome or unnecessary.

“I take an extra hard look at things to make sure the right thing is being done,” said the corporate attorney, who also handles securities law matters for Archive. “I’m trained as a lawyer, not a black lawyer. But I may be in a unique position to see we are sensitive and that past injustices are not being perpetuated.”

Smith believes that subtle discrimination exists in the workplace as a whole. But he and other employees interviewed for this story say they have never encountered intentional discrimination at Archive.

The Archive workplace, however, is not trouble-free.

The task of carrying out affirmative action became more complicated after Archive gained more workers with the acquisition of Cipher Data Products in San Diego and its out-of-state subsidiaries a year ago. And as the company shrinks with the recession, fairness in choosing which employees to lay off has become a more immediate issue than hiring.

President Bush’s opposition to the civil rights legislation has raised the temperature another notch by reviving questions about whether affirmative action results in reverse discrimination against whites.

The proposed legislation is trying to overturn five Supreme Court rulings issued in 1989, which limited an employee’s right to sue an employer for alleged discrimination and to recover damages against employers found guilty.

“There is no doubt in my mind the debate in Congress is meant to obfuscate the whole issue of affirmative action,” said Richard Rosenberg, a Los Angeles labor attorney who counsels Archive on personnel issues. “In terms of reverse discrimination, people feel more comfortable raising the issue when it’s being spearheaded by the President of the United States.”

Rosenberg says that even the strict Democrat-sponsored bill would not force major policy changes at Archive. Each of the Democratic bill’s major tenets are already a part of California’s Fair Employment and Housing law.

For instance, state law already requires trials by jury instead of judge in discrimination cases. It also allows victims to pursue damages for emotional suffering and punitive damages against employers. And California places the burden of proof in discrimination cases on the employer if there is a statistical imbalance, Rosenberg said.

Regardless of the revised law’s final form, Archive’s enforcers say they must remain vigilant when it comes to compliance. The company keeps careful tabs on its changing work force. Archive’s record on hiring minorities and women is typical of non-defense employers in the state, consultants say.

The company says minorities account for 30% of its professional work force--including engineers, accountants, salespeople and other support staff--at its corporate headquarters in Costa Mesa. Among 148 professionals, Asians constituted 23%, white women accounted for 17%, Latinos were 4.1%, and blacks were 2.1%. In management, women accounted for 19% of 137 managers and executives, and minorities accounted for 8%.

Although this isn’t a record that reflects an aggressive social agenda to increase minorities at the expense of white employees, the numbers of minorities and women within Archive shows there is no hidden agenda holding back their progress, officials say.

To prepare managers to deal with issues ranging from how to conduct non-discriminatory job interviews to dealing with sexual harassment, Patricia Bratton, vice president of human relations, brings in Rosenberg to hold seminars on the subject every six to nine months. In the seminars, managers and supervisors are trained to handle sensitive matters involving race, gender or age issues.

Ideally, the seminars should not make the managers scared about offending employees. Rather, it should awaken them to the possibilities of how they can make the most out of an increasingly diverse work force, Rosenberg said.

“When you’re being addressed by lawyers, there is a sense of paranoia,” said Debra Hartman, manager of a sales support unit. “But in everyday business, you realize the training makes you do a better job and it makes the company more competitive because it is getting more out of everyone. “

The company has had few legal tangles with employees in past years. Over a decade in business, five complaints were filed against the company with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Those cases were either settled out of court or dropped because of insufficient evidence.

To achieve its balanced work force, Archive did not adopt rigid quotas, Bratton said. It provided equal opportunity by launching broad recruitment efforts in Southern California, but it generally did not go out of its way to target minorities in its advertising. The company credits its success to an increasingly diverse labor pool in the area and equal opportunity policies.

Although not required by law, Bratton has a consultant prepare an affirmative action plan every year for Archive to give the company data about its progress and where it could use improvement.

The plan establishes a goal, which is the difference between the percentage of minority groups in the relevant labor pool--such as the population of engineers in Southern California--and the actual percentage of minority groups within the company.

But it does not spell out a specific number of minorities or women that must be hired within a certain timetable, Bratton said. The plan keeps the goals in the forefront of the minds of managers, but it also allows them flexibility to hire the best person for the job.

The Archive plan stops short of using aggressive enforcement measures. For instance, the company does not link a manager’s pay to whether a department has met its affirmative action goals, nor does it include affirmative action progress as a factor in performance appraisals.

Bratton said the system works well without such enforcement measures. Human resources officials scrutinize departments and act as overseers, but anything more strict could mean constant intervention in day-to-day management.

Within Archive, there are different opinions on the civil rights issue and whether the existing system is doing the job. Although employees and managers support the company’s policies, their private opinions reflect the division within society as a whole.

Kenneth Gerstner, a controller at the company, said he supports affirmative action as it was intended several decades ago. But he is wary of pressures that would lead to the adoption of rigid quotas.

“I have a problem with quotas,” he said. “I think things have to evolve, and I want the system to be fair to all employees under my supervision.”

Jess Kendrick, one of the few black engineering managers at Archive, said he believes that Archive has made progress on affirmative action and that it does not need to implement policy changes such as quotas to achieve fairness.

But he adds that improving race relations in the workplace should be a daily concern. Despite clear policies, he says some individuals will grudgingly abide by the rules and do little more to ensure that fairness and harmony prevail. That has left him somewhat “disenchanted,” and he is at a loss for how to deal with subtle discrimination.

He would like to see more blacks and Latinos at the company be promoted to high-ranking positions, but he acknowledges that changing the company’s ratios is an “overwhelming” task that he would be foolish to undertake himself.

“To be over-sensitive about it is counterproductive,” Kendrick said. “But to ignore it is naive.”