Alexander's Plan

To dramatize what they called Harvard University's discriminatory hiring practices, a group of students last year occupied a university building. It was a mild melee to protest the scarcity of non-whites among laborers on campus construction jobs. But Harvard took it seriously, recalling all contracts up for award and hiring as a consultant Clifford Alexander Jr., a black partner of the Washington firm of Arnold and Porter.

Alexander, 36, is a brilliant, articulate graduate of Harvard University (cum laude) and Yale Law School. He was appointed chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by President Johnson and was replaced after the Republicans took office.

Last week Harvard adopted an Alexander plan, which will ensure that 19% to 23% of the workers on two upcoming campus construction jobs will be nonwhites. It is believed to be the first time that a builder will be bound by contract to hire a specific number of minority workers. The agreement was worked out craft by craft so that non-whites will not be relegated to lower-paying jobs. One-fifth of those who work as subcontractors must be from minorities.

Alexander arrived at the 19%-23% figure not by tallying the percentage of blacks and Puerto Ricans in Cambridge (19.5%) but by counting the number of nonwhites available for jobs in the 20-odd crafts covered by the contracts. Moreover, if the builder is unable to recruit sufficient numbers, Harvard has the right to supply the minority workers.

The plan's announcement met with predictable grumbles. Greater Boston's Building Trades Employers Association and the Building and Construction

Trades Council accused Harvard of headline hunting. Joel B. Leighton, managing director of the Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts, Inc., opposes it because the plan "does not involve training and has no provision for continuity of employment." At Harvard, the Organization for Black Unity, a student group, called the plan "insignificant," for much the same reasons.

Harvard officials concede that the Alexander formula does not entirely solve the problem of minority hiring. But it does put pressure on contractors and unions to train minority workers. And while Harvard has not officially indicated that it will employ 20% minority group labor in all its future projects, the university hopes that the Alexander plan will set a pattern for all future contracts--amounting to $25 million annually over the next few years.

Good Faith. Despite its shortcomings, the Harvard-Alexander plan is more ambitious than the Government's own Philadelphia Plan. Under this scheme, bidders for federally aided construction contracts of $500,000 or more must pledge themselves to a "good-faith effort" to hire minority employees.

The quotas for nonwhites under the Philadelphia Plan are low--between 4% and 9% the first year, rising to 20% by the fifth year. It has a built-in escape clause; the contractor has only to say that he has honestly tried to hire nonwhites, even if he has not succeeded. Despite these weaknesses, the Nixon Administration seems determined to put pressure on the blatantly discriminatory construction-trades unions. Last week Secretary of Labor George Shultz said the Philadelphia Plan would be extended to 18 other U.S. cities unless they came up with their own plans for ending discrimination in the construction industry.

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