SOME PROMOTIONS BUT MORE LAYOFFS AT AT&T

In January 1973 the "largest oppressor of women workers in the United States" agreed to mend its ways. American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which had been so labelled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in its exhaustive study of sex and race discrimination in the Bell Telephone System. signed an out-of-court settlement with the federal government.

In this and a later agreement covering management employees, AT&T conceded $50 million in back pay and even more in future pay increases to its victims of past discrimination. It also agreed to adopt new hiring practices and a Transfer and Upgrade Plan that would open up better-paying craft and upper-management jobs to minorities and especially women. Bell's efforts were to be judged against an elaborate set of goals and timetables for each of fifteen job categories.

Yet four years later, veteran Pacific Northwest Bell employee and local Communications Workers of 'American representative Dolores Doninger says. "The effect of the agreement has totally deteriorated. Every little niche we can get into is of course a great stride forward, but basically it's still tokenism, with very little progress for women and minorities. Why? You have to go back to the roots of AT&T. They're paternalistic. They still can't get out of the habit of taking care of us with lower wages."

The story of the AT&T settlement began in 1970). when Bell employees' complaints made up one of every twenty charges of civil rights violations filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. More than 2,000 Bell workers, mostly white and minority women, had sought the Commission's help.

Over the next two years, EEOC investigation revealed two entirely separate job tracks in the Bell System. One-operators, service reps, clerks, and operator supervisors—was female. low-paid and dead. end, The other-technical crafts, sales and management-was male, better-paid, and ran to the top of the system. When women were hired or promoted to traditionally male jobs, their salaries were consistently lower than those of the men. (The study also found that 80 percent of black employees made less than $7,000 a year, while 40 percent of white employees made less than $7,000.)

The National Organization for Women (NOW).. the NAACP, the Mexican-American Defense League, and other civil rights groups demanded government action against this symbol of corporate discrimination. NOW, in particular, carried on a nationwide campaign against AT&T monitoring Bell workers' complaints. organizing groups of workers to read the EEOC findings and press for relief, demanding meetings with AT&T officials and leafleting outside telephone company offices.

The phone company unions, on the other hand, attacked the 1973 settlement as soon as it was announced. The largest, the Communications Workers of America, had refused to participate in discussions leading up to the settlement, deespite pressure from the largely female membership and some local officers to do something about discrimination. The CWA and the International Brotherhood (sic) of Electrical Workers both challenged the settlement in court because of a provision called the "affirmative action override" which ordered the company to promote qualified women and minorities even if they lack seniority, when this is necessary to meet the goals.

The new transfer plan, less sex-typed recruiting practices, and use of the seniority override in about 15 percent of promotions (to judge from 1976) have brought some changes. Percentage gains for the latest year for which full figures are available are shown in the accompanying chart. In real numbers, nine thousand more women worked in sales, skilled crafts and semiskilled crafts by the end of 1975 than three years earlier. Nonetheless, three major roadblocks have appeared since 1973:

1. Active discrimination by Bell system continues in new guises. A group of female Bell workers on the West Coast has gune back to court with a class action charging downgrading of job titles once women and minorities are admitted.

Some women promoted to craft jobs as "framemen", for instance, charge that before the settlement their present work was titled and paid as a skilled job, but since integration it's suddenly become semi-skilled. (Framework, in company jargon, usually involves equipment and outside cables.) making the connection between headquarters

In the same suit, a group of line (phone number) assigners says that in response to earlier charges of unequal pay within a job category, the company and the union agrees to split the job; most men were reclassified as "complex line assigners," in a craft position, and women as "sirnple line assigners." in a lower paid clerical category.

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2. Under the terms of the settlement. Bell is under no obligation to increase its hiring in order to make up for past discrimination. I merely has to fill whatever openings appear according to the formula Thus Bell's goal for female outside craft workers (installers. repairers, splicers, "linemen") is 19 percent But. because it has had few openings in the past three years. its total of under 2 percent female is in perfect compliance.

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3. While Pa Bell was once satisfied to cut costs through paying pittances to women. it's now decided it's cheaper still to use understaffing and gadgetry,

The 9.000 additional women who were hired in sales and crafts between 1972-75, it turns out, were more than inatched by a total of 37.(XX) fewer women employed as operators or clerical workers. This is due in part to the influx of 15,000 men into these areas from which they were traditionally barred, but to find the key rause one should check the how-to-dial pages of the In phone book, or the nearest unemployment line three years. Bell slashed its work force of operators by over 24,(XX) more than 16 percent.

The net result of all the comings and goings, in fact, was a 5 percent drop in female employment in the first three years of affirmative action.

Comments Oregon State sociology professor Sally Hacker, who coordinated NOW's 1970-72 campaign

against AT&T. "We were so trained in affirmative action skills, legal and legislative techniques, that the effect of Bell introducing new technology hadn't occurred to us as a big factor When it did, when we saw the projections about future employment, we went to the EEOC with it; they said it wasn't a legal issue, and to go to the union. The union said they couldn't do anything unless a job category was actually being eliminated."

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If the four years of federal formulas. goals, and timetables have added up to only limited success for affirmative action at the phone company, what would it take to make it really work?

"What we need as employees," insists local union rep Dolores Doninger, "is our own panel to oversee affirmative action. The company has a panel, but the employees don't even get to know what's going on Unfortunately, the union won't touch it, won't pursue any grievances. The national officers wouldn't include Transfer and Upgrade in the last contract negotiations. because they're still trying to get it thrown out in court In all the areas, the problem adds up to control

Despite feds and formulas, the day-to day and year to year decisions about hiring, firing, promoting, and classifying workers remain solidly in the hands of the "largest oppressor of women workers." "We in the Bell System are very comfortable," says AT&T's personnel manager for equal employment opportunity about the settlement late in 1973. "We came out with the right to manage our business." That exclusive right remainis at the center of the wrongs that continue in the Bell System.

(From Dollars & Sense)

Cover Photo

Jean Harrison, a volunteer at the Rape Crisis Center helped sell MY BODY BELONGS TO ME T-shirts at the E. 115th Street Festival in September. She has been with the Center for about two years, is the mother of two young girls, and is the Women's Health and Youth Director at West Shore YWCA. At CRCC she is a hotline counselor and in charge of the making and distribution of T-shirts.

November. 1977/What She Wants/page 1