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The ?Philadelphia Plan? Still Lives

Many readers will not know (though some who are as old I am will remember) that ?affirmative action? in its current form, i.e., racial preference blending in to racial quotas, originated with President

Richard Nixon and his ?Philadelphia Plan.?
If proof was needed of Nixon?s role in the creation of affirmative action, it can be found in the story of the 1969 Philadelphia Plan, which required all contractors working on large federally funded projects to adopt ?numerical goals and timetables? to assure the desegregation of their workforces....

Although most people have forgotten Nixon?s ?Philadelphia Plan,? current residents of Philadelphia have good reason to be familiar with the issues it addressed. The City Council has been withholding contracts to work on a megabucks Convention Center project in an attempt to force the construction and trades unions to ?diversify.? The unions have resisted, and recently both sides blinked.

Building trades unions say they will agree to minority hiring goals in order to secure jobs on the $700 million expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.

The unions supplied statistics on their minority membership Monday during a day of negotiations with the City Council. The numbers confirm a newspaper report that about 80 percent of the construction union work force in the region is white and about 70 percent of those workers live outside the city.

The unions pledge to pursue goals of having 50 percent of the convention center workers on the project live in the city, 25 percent be African American, 10 percent be Hispanic American, 5 percent be Asian American and 10 percent be women.

The Council says the unions will report quarterly to a 15-member board to be named by Mayor Michael Nutter.

But rest assured: ?goals? are not ?quotas.?The ?Philadelphia Plan?

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).