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Avoiding Muscle. The Nixon Administration earlier this year began requiring contractors in Philadelphia to present detailed plans for hiring Negroes in order to qualify to bid on federal construction projects. George Meany and many contractors argue that the "Philadelphia Plan" amounts to a racial-quota system barred by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In response to an inquiry from Arkansas Senator John McClellan, U.S. Comptroller General Elmer Staats recently held that the plan is illegal. The Labor Department, backed by a contrary opinion from Attorney General John Mitchell, is pushing ahead anyway. It expects to extend the plan to federal projects in Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh and other cities.
For all that, the Government has so far failed to flex its muscle to prevent unions from practicing racism. Beyond question, labor's power to deliver votes has played a part in such inaction. In return for promises not to discriminate, President Neil Haggerty of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. construction trades union received what he considers "personal commitments" from Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to let unions remain the sole judge of "the quality of our membership." President Nixon has made no such promise. Still, the Administration has yet to use its power under the 1964 civil rights law to seek injunctions against obvious patterns of discrimination. Last week the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette condemned Attorney General Mitchell for avoiding such litigation. The paper editorialized: "How can we lecture people to respect the law when the highest enforcers of the law seem indifferent to enforcing it themselves?"
Federal pressure could go a long way toward forcing recalcitrant unions to accept minorities. One helpful step would be abolition of construction-union hiring halls, if not by agreement with employers then by legislative fiat. Through various covert devices of favoritism in the hiring halls, many local officials prevent Negroes and other outsiders from getting a fair share of work. Unions should be compelled to give up exclusive control over apprenticeship programs and standards, although it may be arguable whether industry or Government should take over. It is hardly an accident that in most industries where companies control hiring, training and promotion, the Negro gets a far better break than when such matters are left in labor's hands. Unions could have been a powerful force in helping to elevate the American Negro. Where labor has failed, the Government sooner or later seems almost certain to move into the gap.