Maynard Jackson Backed in Construction Plan Bid

The Atlanta Constitution (Thursday, April 1, 1971)

Metro Atlanta builders and unions took a verbal pasting at a federal hearing Wednesday and Vice Mayor Maynard Jackson drew unexpected support in a try to head off a federally imposed labor integration plan. The hearings resume today.

Jackson was questioned by the hearing chairman, Nathaniel Pierson, an official of U.S. Labor department, who asked if it is still possible to come up with a voluntary integration plan for the Atlanta construction industry.

"Maybe," answered Jackson. "We should make one more try" for a "home town agreement" with a short time limit, the vice mayor answered.

Jackson was one of the catalysts of a year-long attempt to get a local agreement on minority hiring and avoid the federal hearings which began Wednesday.

The federal panel is gathering evidence which could result in an order to Atlanta contractors to integrate their work forces by specific percentages. The order is enforceable against any contractor who does any federally supported work. Similar orders have been issued in Washington and Philadelphia.

The Atlanta talks broke down after the so-called Black Coalition refused to negotiate further. The Labor department moved in.

The Black Coalition walkout came after its leaders accused unions of refusing to be specific in the negotiations, refusing to say how many blacks each trade would hire.

Jackson testified Wednesday that there are black people available to fill construction jobs in Atlanta but they "do not believe that the unions mean business and why engage in a futile act" of applying for union membership.

Either the labor movement continues as "one of America's few recourses for the disposed," he said, or "it will become an absurd and hypocritical caricature of meandering meaninglessness."

But the 30-day negotiations failed, Pierson said, and the Labor department imposed an order which demanded some unions become 43 per cent black by 1974.

Harry Bexley of the Atlanta electrical workers and George Peterson of the Atlanta chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association testified their groups would like to resume talks on an Atlanta plan for construction integration. Bexley's union, with 1,206 members, includes six blacks and two Indians. Peterson said the 33 firms in his group, with 80 per cent of the union construction payroll in 43 Georgia counties, hires only members of Bexley's union.

Harold O. Gray, the only white official of the local roofers union, testified that he would support any effort to hire more black workers. He said his union is about 98 per cent black now. [ed. note: The temperature of the kettle that melts the asphalt used for roofing must be maintained at 500 degrees to keep the asphalt melted.]

The hearings started with a series of federal official testifying on the integration of workers on federally funded projects in Metro Atlanta. The agreed:

1. About 2 per cent of the work force is black.

2. The top-pay unions send few minority workers to the jobsites, sometime none.

3. Union contractors are afraid to hire anybody not sent by the union because the union would strike.

4. Non-union contractors don't hire any more blacks, in percentages than union contractors.

the only exception was the Federal Highway Administration which said its contractors were employing blacks at an 'acceptable level' except for men provided by the electrical union. Only white electricians are on the job, the road agency said.

5. When blacks are union members, they are in the low-paid crafts--especially common laborers.

There are very few Atlanta blacks in high-paying construction jobs, the federal government says.

There are plenty of Atlanta blacks willing to work but the construction unions won't let them, the state contends.

We would be glad to hire more blacks, but the unions won't send them to us and would strike if we went out and hired them, the contractors say.

There are 37 black men in the five top-paying construction trade unions in Atlanta. The same unions have 3,993 white members. This although one-third of metro Atlanta citizens are blacks and blacks are in the majority in Atlanta.

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update 24 July 2008