Most Oppose Preferences, Poll Finds
A majority of California voters want an end to affirmative action in private industry as well as in government, according to a public opinion poll commissioned by two of the state’s most recognizable big businesses.
The result was described as “very troubling” by representatives of the two firms that paid for the poll: electronics giant Hewlett-Packard and the health care firm Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in California.
The reason for their concern is that both companies are strong public advocates of private-sector affirmative action as good for business, said Gary P. Fazzino, Hewlett-Packard’s state governmental affairs manager, and Ron Knox, Kaiser’s vice president for diversity.
Hewlett-Packard, headquartered in Palo Alto, has invested heavily in outreach affirmative action programs and promotes its work force diversity as a plus in global competition. And Kaiser, with headquarters in Oakland, has devised a growth strategy for its health care services that depends on its ability to tap into an increasingly diverse population for new members.
“At HP we have very strong feelings about the need for outreach programs. That is what affirmative action is to us, not quotas,” Fazzino said.
Hewlett-Packard, the state’s second-largest business in gross sales, and Kaiser Permanente commissioned the poll to try to decipher public attitudes about affirmative action in light of the debate over Proposition 209, which would outlaw race- and gender-based affirmative action in state and local government, but not private industry. The proposition will be decided Nov. 5.
Neither company has taken a position directly for or against Proposition 209, but both emphasized Wednesday that their own affirmative action efforts would remain in place and not be weakened, no matter what the election’s outcome.
Their poll of likely voters was conducted in August by Decision Research and released Wednesday.
Among its findings:
* A razor-thin majority of 51% said they favored eliminating affirmative action in private business, while 36% said such programs should be maintained. Thirteen percent were undecided.
* By comparison, a very similar plurality, 49% to 40%, said affirmative action programs should be eliminated in government employment, education and contracting.
* Further, by a margin of 55% to 22% with 23% undecided, voters felt that big business was in favor of eliminating affirmative action programs.
The random sample of 800 likely voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Hewlett-Packard’s Fazzino said some of those results were particularly unsettling for business. For one thing, he said, “there seems to be a belief that big business is behind this [Proposition 209]. This isn’t true. And that’s one reason we wanted to share these results with the public. That perception is very troubling. It really bothered us.”
As for the 51% who believed that affirmative action should be eliminated in business, Fazzino said, “This was of some concern. It certainly is HP’s intent to maintain our affirmative action programs. Again, our efforts are concerned with outreach, not quotas.”
Kaiser’s Knox said, “It’s very troubling to us too. . . . Our commitment to affirmative action is good business. We’ve done a lot of work in this area. One of our primary growth strategies depends on our ability to reach out and attract members from diverse communities.”
In the campaign over Proposition 209, opponents all along have warned that a public vote to repeal affirmative action in government would inevitably call into question private-sector diversity efforts.
Supporters, on the other hand, say their target remains only race- and gender-based “preferential treatment” in the affairs of government.
Executives of Hewlett-Packard and Kaiser said that not all the poll’s findings were discouraging. They noted:
* Given a list of 10 issues, which included crime, the economy, the environment, taxes and transportation, only 2% of voters said that “addressing affirmative action” was their top priority.
* Large majorities of Californians said they favored at least some of the equal opportunity efforts that fall under the affirmative action label: 78% supported goals but not quotas to open opportunities for women and minorities; 76% supported remedial courses to help disadvantaged minorities gain equal footing; 70% supported outreach to expand minority enrollment in colleges, and 68% supported outreach to recruit minorities and women for employment.
