Word: birmingham
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...Like Birmingham's, the Boston police and fire departments were not representative of the population they serve. Finding past discrimination, the courts ordered a preferential hiring plan. All went more or less smoothly until Proposition 2 1/2 slashed city revenues, forcing layoffs in the departments. Under the last-in-first-out policies of the police and fire forces, the bulk of the employees who would have lost their jobs due to the cutbacks were the newly hired women and minorities--effectively negating the effects of the affirmative action plan. When the department altered its seniority plan somewhat to preserve some...
While seniority plans have been considered somewhat immune from affirmative action measures, the Birmingham program now under attack is a typical remedial hiring program. Although the plan does include the use of quotas--the most extreme and most controversial affirmative action method--those numerical goals have repeatedly been approved, and often mandated, by the courts. Typically, they are applied where less stringent measures have failed to bring about change...
...Reagan Administration was under any obligation in the Birmingham case, it can only be to support the city and come down squarely against the rising calls to reverse discrimination that have grossly distorted the purpose and meaning of affirmative action...
...face of continued widespread discriminatory hiring patterns and practices, it is no wonder that women and minorities find it hard to take seriously the complaints of white males. No affirmative action plan--including Birmingham's--has ever sanctioned lowering standards for women and minorities; instead, they call on employers to speed the placement of qualified female and minority applicants where it has been found that past discriminatory treatment has excluded them from these jobs. Even under the Birmingham program--which has successfully improved the composition of the city's police and fire fighting forces--whites continue to be hired...
...chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Carter, accused the Reagan Administration of "escalating the drumbeat" of reverse discrimination charges. Her attack is well grounded--the Administration has sided with whites claiming reverse discrimination in suits in Detroit, Memphis, and New Orleans in addition to the Boston and Birmingham cases...