Affirmative action programs in employment are designed to force bosses to hire a certain proportion of workers who are Black, members of other oppressed nationalities, or women, in order to break through discriminatory employment practices and broader conditions in capitalist society that perpetuate discrimination. Affirmative action struggles have also been waged around job promotions, school admissions, and decent housing.  
 
Class solidarity
This demand is key to charting a course to build class solidarity. Together with the fight to ensure jobs for all by reducing the workweek with no cut in pay, it counters the divisions used by the capitalist rulers to weaken workers and farmers. Another important demand that has an affirmative action character is raising the minimum wage, which also strengthens the entire working class.

Defending affirmative action takes on added importance at a time of growing economic crisis. More than 1 million jobs were slashed in last year’s recession. A September 6 Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed that the jobless rate among Blacks was 10.7 percent in the second quarter of 2002, more than double that of whites at 5.2 percent. The jobless rate for Latinos was 7.5 percent.

Some 36.7 percent of the Black nationality lived below the official poverty line as of 1998--nearly double the national average of 18.9 percent and more than twice the rate of 15.1 percent for whites.

Government statistics in 1998 showed workers who are female earning 76 percent of the income of workers who are male.

These facts underscore the reality that despite gains in affirmative action, the systematic discrimination in hiring and firing of women, Blacks, Chicanos, and other oppressed nationalities continues and remains an integral part of capitalist rule.

Meanwhile, assaults on affirmative action continue. Since 1995, when the University of California regents ended affirmative action in hiring and admissions, federal courts have banned such plans at schools in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Lawsuits challenging affirmative action involving public housing in Yonkers, New York, and the admissions policy at the University of Michigan Law School are winding their way toward decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

These attacks have sparked resistance. Unions and the NAACP sponsored a march by thousands of people in Tallahassee, Florida, in March 2000 to protest an executive order by Gov. John Ellis Bush the previous year eliminating affirmative action programs in college admissions in Florida’s 10 public universities and in state contracts.

Opponents of affirmative action argue falsely that affirmative action is "reverse discrimination." In a September 4 column, conservative writer Thomas Sowell claimed it meant "lowering the standards" to "get an acceptable racial body count." John O’Sullivan, an editor of the right-wing magazine National Review, asserted in an opinion piece earlier this year that affirmative action imposes "heavier and more visible costs" on white males "in terms of lost jobs, promotions denied, and college places taken by others."

Liberal politicians often argue against quotas while giving lip service to affirmative action. Former president William Clinton has often repeated his position on affirmative action as "mend it, don’t end it," and "end abuses, prohibit quotas, subject affirmative action to strict review."

Affirmative action is not charity to make up for past wrongs--it’s about fighting inequality and discrimination today. Nor is it a morally correct stance that causes material disadvantages for males and whites. It’s the capitalist bosses who seek to perpetuate divisions among working people through discrimination against women, Blacks, and other oppressed nationalities. They profit from paying them less.

Affirmative action is a class question, one that is in the interests of all working people.

The gains in affirmative action developed out of the titanic civil rights battles in 1950s and ‘60s that overturned the Jim Crow system of legal segregation. Those struggles forced Pres. Lyndon Johnson to sign the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which includes Title II barring racial discrimination in "public accommodations," and Title VII, prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin. In 1965 Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, which banned discrimination in federal employment and hiring by federal contractors.

Those laws codified what was won on the ground through mass actions, and provided the legal basis for affirmative action drives led by oppressed nationalities and women. Thousands of lawsuits were filed to break down hiring barriers. Women continued to fight their way into basic industry, which meant higher wages and greater unionization.

In 1974 the employers in the basic steel industry signed a court-ordered consent decree to establish plant-wide seniority. That meant workers hired into departments with the worst pay and job conditions could bid into jobs in other departments without losing seniority. The agreement also set hiring goals for women and skilled craft apprenticeship goals for women, Blacks and Latinos.

Kaiser Aluminum Corporation signed a contract with the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) in 1974 that included a training program for craft jobs stipulating that one minority or female worker be hired for every white male admitted. Until then the company had only hired workers with prior craft experience. Blacks had long been excluded from those types of jobs. For example, although they made up about 39 percent of the workforce in Gramercy, Louisiana, they held only five of the 273 crafts jobs--less than 2 percent--at the Kaiser plant there.

In 1974 Brian Weber, a lab technician at the Gramercy plant, filed a lawsuit to overturn the affirmative action plan, claiming that it was "reverse discrimination" against him and other white males.

After a 1976 trial a U.S. district court ruled in favor of Weber, and the Kaiser bosses ended the training program for all workers. The Steelworkers and other major unions as well as the AFL-CIO put their weight behind the battle to overturn the Weber decision, which led to the Supreme Court overturning the ruling in 1979.  
 
Dual seniority lists
The defeat of the Weber challenge strengthened the USWA and marked a big victory for working people. But the establishment of plant-wide seniority by the consent decree did not address discrimination in layoffs. During economic downturns affirmative action gains can be wiped out as women, Blacks, and Latinos often become the "last hired, first fired."

Dual seniority lists--one for Blacks, Latinos, and women, another for other workers--are necessary to minimize the consequences of mass layoffs. In the early 1970s a district court ordered Continental Can Co. to draw up two seniority lists so that any layoffs would preserve an agreed-on minimal proportion of Black workers. Recalls were made on a one-to-one basis until all Black workers had returned to work. The court also ordered the company to adopt an affirmative action employment plan after all workers had been recalled. An appeals court overturned the ruling in 1975.

Affirmative action is toothless without quotas. Government statistics reveal how the lawful workings of capitalism reinforce racist discrimination and resulting inequality in jobs, housing, and education. Mandatory quotas in hiring, education, and housing have proven necessary to combat pervasive discrimination and help guarantee opportunities for women and oppressed nationalities.

The Changing Face of U.S. Politics by Jack Barnes is one place where readers will find an effective explanation of why affirmative action is a vital question for working people as a whole.  
 
 
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