Breaking the Glass : Panel Seeks to Remove Ceiling on Promotions

What are the best ways to smash the hard-to-spot barriers that prevent women and minorities from advancing in the workplace?

The executive director of a federal commission exploring the “glass ceiling” offers two possible solutions that would give many executives heartaches: reinvigorate the labor movement and expand the power of government regulators.

Joyce D. Miller, the longtime labor leader who runs the U.S. Labor Department’s Glass Ceiling Commission, says her panel has lots of work to do before issuing its recommendations next January on promoting diversity and fighting discrimination on the job.

But Miller, in Los Angeles to conduct a public hearing Friday that will spotlight her commission’s efforts, says some answers are already clear.

And, she insists, they aren’t hostile to business.

“Corporations, unions and organizations aren’t going to promote programs for diversity and for breaking the glass ceiling just because it’s the right thing to do,” Miller said. “The change is going to take place when companies realize that diversity is a smart business decision.

“You want to make more use of everyone in your work force, and the only way you are going to is by promoting diversity and breaking the glass ceiling,” she said.

Already, Miller said, some major employers are making strides in that direction. One of the most effective approaches, she said, is the establishment of “mentoring” programs. New or lower-level workers are teamed with veteran employees who acquaint them with the ins and outs of their organizations.

Such programs, she said, can provide insights on “the kinds of things that aren’t in the employee handbook, such as how you should dress and who are the politically important people in your organization.”

Although some employers are voluntarily adopting programs to remove obstacles that traditionally have hindered women and minorities in the workplace, many others will need prodding, Miller said.

To that end, she said her commission’s members are beginning to think about ways that government regulators can do more to promote diversity in the private sector. For instance, companies hoping to win antitrust clearance for mergers might be required to meet equal employment opportunity standards. Although Miller acknowledged that such a proposal would be politically explosive, she noted that federal contractors are already are required to pass such tests.

“I know what the attitudes are toward more regulation. All I can say is that we’re considering it,” said Miller, whose panel’s recommendations will not be binding.

Still, she said, the best way to promote equal opportunity is for enlightened employers to lead by example--and for unions to push for the same goals at companies that balk.

Miller, one of the most powerful women in the U.S. labor movement, credits unions with spearheading the push for equal opportunity on the job.

She said unions will do even more on that score if the Clinton Administration is successful in passing labor law reform, including a proposal to prevent employers from permanently replacing strikers.

Miller joined the union now known as the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers after getting her master’s degree in social science from the University of Chicago in 1962. Starting as the union’s education director in the Chicago area, she rose through the ranks to become the first woman elected to the executive council of the AFL-CIO in 1980.