In Good Faith

Few issues have aroused as much debate within the Reagan Administration as the 20-year-old Executive Order requiring companies doing business with the Government to hire more women and minority employees. Attorney General Edwin Meese has long contended that the numerical hiring goals established in response to Executive Order No. 11246 create a racial quota system and a form of "reverse discrimination" against white men. Labor Secretary William Brock and others who support the order have sought to stymie the Attorney General's persistent efforts to dismantle affirmative action and make it voluntary.

Last week Meese and Brock appeared on the verge of a compromise. Together they are expected to propose that the President sign a new Executive Order specifically barring minority quotas in hiring. However, the new directive will not eliminate the goals and timetables that Meese wants abolished. Since regulations issued under the current Executive Order already essentially proscribe racial quotas, requiring only that companies make "good faith efforts" to meet the hiring goals, the new proposal would result in almost no change in the current state of affirmative-action law.

The compromise was apparently reached at the not-so-gentle behest of White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, who felt that the dispute was politically damaging to the Administration. Regan's fiat came after Meese's Justice Department launched a surprise attack in August by submitting a draft of a presidential order that effectively branded Labor Department hiring goals as illegal quotas. The tactic raised such a ruckus that the Justice Department judiciously retreated. Regan then told Meese and Brock to come to an agreement on their dispute before taking it to the President.

Although Meese knows that Reagan shares his distaste for the current regulations, he has been outgunned on the issue. A majority of the Cabinet are against gutting the Executive Order, as are the leaders of both parties in Congress. In the Senate, 67 members have urged the President to retain the current Executive Order. The system of goals has support not only among civil rights organizations but also from many U.S. businessmen, who find it a fair and flexible solution. Says Ralph G. Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights: "We've got the strongest consensus on this that we've ever had on a civil rights issue."

The compromise could collapse only if a frustrated Attorney General decides to circumvent the White House chief of staff and go directly to the President. Outnumbered everywhere else, Meese is unlikely to make a last- minute appeal in the Oval Office.