George Shultz Backs Initiative to Scrap Affirmative Action

Former Secretary of Labor George Shultz, who helped establish one of the nation’s first affirmative action programs, came out Thursday in favor of a California initiative to end such efforts.

Shultz, a Stanford University professor and a fellow at the Hoover Institution who headed the U.S. Labor Department in the Nixon administration, deemed present affirmative action programs “counterproductive.” In a telephone interview, Shultz said he fully supports the initiative, dubbed the “California civil rights initiative” by proponents.

Present affirmative action programs have taken on a “bureaucratic life of their own” and foster racial tensions, he said.

Shultz was instrumental in forming the Philadelphia Plan that was signed into law by his assistant, Arthur Fletcher, in 1969. For the first time, the government set specific targets for minority hiring in order for contractors to be eligible for federal contracts. Started in Philadelphia, the idea eventually spread.