Hiring Quotas

Democratic candidate for governor Dianne Feinstein delivered a sweeping and historic pledge Saturday to reserve half the jobs in her Administration for women and appoint minorities in direct measure to their percentage of the state's population. Campaigning before black audiences in Los Angeles, Feinstein said she would employ such numerical quotas through all levels of government, from her office staff to department heads to judges.

The Army is unlikely to meet its 2005 recruiting goals for the National Guard and Reserves, with the prospect of lengthy deployments in Iraq scaring away potential recruits for the Army's active and reserve ranks, senior Defense officials said Wednesday. The Pentagon is struggling for the second straight year to bolster the ranks of its troops once known as "weekend warriors" who now make up more than 40% of the 145,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq.

The Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives is expected to make public Wednesday a substitute civil rights package that contains language seeking to make it impossible for employers to use racial quotas in hiring. President Bush vetoed the 1990 civil rights bill because he said it would lead to employers using quotas to avoid lawsuits for discrimination. The new plan also contains other proposed amendments to the bill now before the House.

A federal judge on Monday ended a 1974 consent decree requiring that half of all Los Angeles firefighters be hired from the ranks of blacks, Latinos and Asians to alleviate racial disparities. "Twenty eight years of water has now passed over the dam. All of the goals of the original consent decree have been accomplished," U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp wrote. The ruling represents a historic moment for the 3,334-member department, once considered a bastion of resistance to racial integration.

A federal judge on Monday ended a 1974 consent decree requiring that half of all Los Angeles firefighters be hired from the ranks of blacks, Latinos and Asians to alleviate racial disparities. "Twenty eight years of water has now passed over the dam. All of the goals of the original consent decree have been accomplished," U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp wrote. The ruling represents a historic moment for the 3,334-member department, once considered a bastion of resistance to racial integration.

The House on Wednesday approved a major civil rights bill designed to combat job discrimination and sent it to President Bush, who promised a veto on grounds that it would lead to hiring quotas. "I hope that President Bush will reconsider the unwise and unjustified course he is on," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said following House approval of the bill, 273 to 154. The margin was 12 votes short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto and pass the bill over the President's objections.

Struggling to sway wavering lawmakers, House Democratic leaders Wednesday made another change in their civil rights bill in an effort to defuse President Bush's politically potent allegation that it would force business firms to hire by race or sex quotas. The latest revision declares that quotas are an "unlawful employment practice" that would allow victims of reverse discrimination to sue employers for damages if they fill jobs on the basis of racial or gender percentages.

The Senate Tuesday passed a major civil rights bill but fell five votes short of mustering the two-thirds majority needed to override an almost certain presidential veto. By a 62-34 margin, the chamber voted to overturn or alter six recent Supreme Court decisions which have made it more difficult for individuals to prove job discrimination. Opponents of the bill, including Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and White House advisers John H. Sununu and C.

All men and women are not created equal. Some can race up a fire ladder carrying a thick hose on their backs. Most, particularly women, cannot. So, if a city fire department requires job seekers to climb high ladders and carry heavy hoses and oxygen tanks, does that constitute illegal sex discrimination? Yes, said women who sued the Evanston Fire Department, because those tests had the effect of excluding females from firefighting jobs.

With the House scheduled to vote on the controversial civil rights bill as early as Tuesday, Democratic congressional leaders charged Sunday that President Bush wants a political issue for 1992 more than a new law this year, and that he is deliberately misrepresenting their attempt at a compromise. In sharply worded responses to Bush's attack a day earlier on the Democratic-sponsored civil rights measure, House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Rep.

A federal appeals court declined to review an earlier ruling that struck down government rules requiring radio and television broadcasters to recruit women and minorities in hiring. The Federal Communications Commission had asked the full Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to review the April 14 decision by a three-judge panel that threw out the long-standing rules.

In a lawsuit against the Anaheim Fire Department, two former and one current firefighter allege that they were forced to resign or were otherwise harassed for speaking out against the department's minority hiring policies. "These guys stood up for the standards and basically got put down very hard," said James G. Harker, a Santa Ana attorney representing Jimmie Lee Cox and John Lynn Cox, both 50; and Gregory J. Mowad, 33.

A federal requirement that broadcasters hire racial minorities was thrown out as unconstitutional by an appeals court Tuesday in a setback for efforts to bring more diversity to radio and TV stations. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Federal Communications Commission had failed to explain how its equal employment opportunities regulations served the public interest--the standard the FCC used when it adopted the rules in the late 1960s.

Ending quotas, set-asides and other preferences in public contracting has long been the aim of many supporters of Proposition 209. But despite Monday's U.S. Supreme Court action upholding the anti-affirmative-action measure, a host of public initiatives giving minorities and women a leg up in public contracts remain intact and are likely to continue for months or years to come. Some will be the target of lengthy court challenges that could take years to wend their way through the legal system.

KCAL Fined for Minority Hiring Deficiencies: The Federal Communications Commission has renewed KCAL-TV Channel 9's broadcast license for another five years but also fined the Walt Disney Co.-owned station $30,000 for deficiencies in minority recruitment and failure to keep accurate records in that area before 1993.

In two victories for white men who claimed they had suffered reverse discrimination, the Supreme Court on Monday let stand rulings that threw out a quota for promotions of black firefighters in Birmingham, Ala., and awarded a white engineer $425,000 in damages because he was passed over for a promotion. The outcome in the two cases shows an increased willingness by the federal courts to apply anti-discrimination laws in favor of white employees as well as minorities.

As the House prepares to take up a Democratic-sponsored civil rights measure, two key women members of Congress faulted their own leadership Thursday for denying them an opportunity to remove a proposed cap on damage awards to female victims of job discrimination.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a major civil rights bill to curb job discrimination and brushed aside Bush Administration warnings that the legislation will lead to hiring quotas. "We did not bring forth a bill that will lead to quotas or any danger of quotas," Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), the bill's sponsor, said before the panel approved the measure, 24 to 12. Civil rights forces are pushing for floor action on the bill as early as next week. House Speaker Thomas S.

The latest attempt by labor activist Deacon Alexander to add members of his Los Angeles Unemployed Council to a local construction crew targeted an African-American contractor, who angrily denounced Alexander's campaign as unreasonable. Alexander, whose Unemployed Council has garnered attention for its aggressive tactics in shutting down job sites that it perceives are not hiring enough African-Americans from surrounding communities, picketed a site on Aug.

In the wake of the City Council's decision to dramatically expand the ranks of females in the Los Angeles Police Department, minority officers raised new concerns Thursday about their own staffing levels, and rank-and-file officers were divided on the merits of the plan. LAPD Detective Rick Barrera, president of the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn.