Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

Fire departments are notorious for discrimination in hiring of Blacks, other oppressed nationalities, and women. Their bigotry was so pronounced that in 1972 Congress mentioned them by name when it extended Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to public employment. Now the majority of the high court is trying to stand Title VII—which outlaws discrimination in hiring and on the job—on its head.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion for the court, argued, “The city rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white.”

The Obama administration followed suit, with the Justice Department submitting a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court arguing that the case should be sent back to the lower courts to see if the city was misusing Title VII as “a pretext for intentional racial discrimination.”

There is no way to overcome racial discrimination against Blacks unless you take race, and in the case of women, sex into account. And the only way to force the employers to break with longstanding discriminatory practices is to set quotas in hiring and promotion.

Affirmative action is one of the biggest gains for the labor movement in recent decades. It is a product of civil rights battles of the 1960s that extended workers’ social wage, including the establishment of Medicaid, Medicare, and Supplemental Security Income benefits for the blind, disabled, and elderly. Defense of affirmative action is a necessary step in strengthening the increased unity of the working class won in that great social movement.

Defending affirmative action is especially important now as the bosses use the contraction of the capitalist economy to pit workers against one another. The current mass layoffs threaten to wipe out past gains for affirmative action as Blacks, Latinos, and women often become the “last hired, first fired.”

To minimize the consequences of these layoffs, the unions should insist on the establishment of dual seniority lists—one for Blacks, other oppressed nationalities, and women; another for other workers—so that the percentage of Blacks, Latinos, and women in the workplace doesn’t decline.
 
 
Related articles:
In firefighters case, high court deals blow to affirmative action  
 
 
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