Democratic Party politician Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lowry, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President Kweisi Mfume held a Washington, D.C. news conference to announce the withdrawal of the boycott threat. "There is now a sufficiently comprehensive and workable plan to call off the consumer boycott," said Jackson.
In November, a disgruntled company executive made public tapes of a meeting of top Texaco executives. That meeting, which was punctuated by remarks about "niggers" and "black jelly beans," planned a cover-up of evidence concerning Texaco's racist practices in the face of an antidiscrimination lawsuit by Texaco employees.
In the wake of the ensuing national uproar, Texaco settled the antidiscrimination suit for $176 million, including a $115 million payment to about 1,400 salaried Black employees. The oil giant also agreed to submit its hiring and promotion practices to a court-monitored task force empowered to set hiring quotas.
Texaco announced in mid-December it expects to increase its total "minority" employment from 23 percent of its 19,554 employees to 29 percent by the year 2000. According to company officials, employment of Blacks will rise from 9 to 13 percent and the number of women employees will grow from 32 percent to 35 percent.
The suit by Black middle-managers at Texaco was one of a number of such suits against oil companies in recent years. Shell Oil Company, the U.S. division of Royal Dutch/Shell, has been a particular target because of its poor record on affirmative action.
According to a November 16 report in the Houston Chronicle, only 18.2 percent of Shell's work force is composed of "minorities," the second lowest percentage among all major oil companies in the U.S. Even these figures may be inflated, however. The same article quoted the chief executive officer of Phillips Petroleum pointing to a Norwegian heading one of the company's business units as an example of diversity.
Three Black managers at Shell headquarters in Houston filed a suit similar to that at Texaco early last year. They charged that Black salaried employees were regularly passed over for promotions and higher paying jobs. Only two Blacks have ever been appointed to executive ranks in Shell's retail marketing division, the suit alleges, and all but two of Shell's top managers are white. No one from an oppressed nationality, they state, has ever been offered a stint at Royal Dutch/Shell international headquarters in London, considered a requirement for top advancement in the company. A similar suit was filed by African-American managers in northern California last year.
An antidiscrimination suit brought by blue collar employees who are Black at the Shell refinery and chemical complex in Deer Park, Texas, just outside Houston, was settled two years ago with a relatively meager cash award for the workers. The settlement did not include any meaningful agreement by Shell to upgrade its affirmative action policies.
Blacks and Mexican-American workers were excluded for many years from production jobs at Shell and other plants in this huge petrochemical center. The company was forced to end these "Jim Crow" practices only after Black workers in the area, inspired by the gains being won during the civil rights movement, organized and fought for affirmative action on the job.
The lawsuit at Deer Park maintained that Shell discriminated in hiring, firing, and promotional practices. The charge of hiring discrimination was thrown out by the courts because the plaintiffs were unable to afford the costs involved in mounting a massive survey of all possible Blacks who applied to Shell in the last few decades.
Evidence of Shell's discriminatory practices in hiring is not hard to come by. On the walls of the training center hang pictures of every training class hired in the last few decades. Even a cursory look at these photographs confirms that Shell has hired an ever decreasing number of Blacks in the last 10 years.
Inside the Deer Park refinery a vigorous discussion has taken place among members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), which organizes production workers there. The claim by some workers that discrimination no longer exists has been dealt a blow by the Texaco revelations. But there is still a wide range of opinions on the value of discrimination lawsuits. Some workers point to the Texaco events to bolster their support for affirmative action, while others discount its impact.
Everyone, though, has enjoyed the current joke making the rounds: "Why, Shell isn't at all like Texaco. They wouldn't allow a tape recorder in the board room."
Jerry Freiwirth is an operator at the Shell Deer Park refinery and is a member of OCAW Local 4-367.