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NATIONAL
JOBS FOR ALL COALITION %
CIPA, 777 UN Plaza, Suite 3C, NY, NY 10017
UNCOMMON SENSE 7
©
October 1997
FULL
EMPLOYMENT AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
By
Manning Marable, Professor of History and Director, Institute
for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University
and Advisory Board, National Jobs for All Coalition
What has inflamed
white America's opposition to affirmative action? More than anything
else, white male fear. Fear makes possible the politics of opposition
to programs that attempt to redress past and present patterns
of discrimination based on race or gender. This fear reflects
narrowing economic opportunity for many people in the U.S. who
are accustomed to a rising standard of living. Recent political
attacks on the aims and practices of affirmative action in employment
have sought to mislead working class opinion with the claim that
the pressures on white men stem from the unfair employment of
minorities.
African-Americans
are losing ground
No such significant
displacement can possibly have occurred: the number of minority
workers benefiting from affirmative action is minuscule in comparison
to the millions of jobs that corporations have systematically
exported or destroyed in recent years. If affirmative action had
been sufficient to offset corporate downsizing, the black-white
wage gap should have narrowed for young workers. On the contrary,
for men 25 to 34 years old, that gap increased for high-school
graduates and even more for college graduates between 1973 and
1989.1 This happened even as the wages of white men
of that age fell. Unfortunately, the legal remedies of affirmative
action began to be applied just as the stagnation of living standards
began. Thus to understand the drive to abolish affirmative action,
it is important to examine trends which have led to elimination
of jobs and which reduce or threaten living standards for almost
everyone.
The average
American is losing ground
Working-class and
middle-income people have steadily lost economic ground. Real
[inflation-adjusted] income for the average family has stagnated
over the past two decades.2 Only families with two
earners have had an increase in income since 1973. All other families
have lost income during this period.3
By all opinion polls,
white males are the group most strongly opposed to affirmative
action: they perceive themselves to be particularly vulnerable
in the new world (and domestic) economic order. Since the early
1970's, the real income of the full-time male worker has declined
by 11 percent while that of women workers rose 13 percent as women's
access to jobs has improved and as men's employment has been more
adversely affected by industrial change.4 Then, too,
for whatever reason, older men are far less likely than women
to educate themselves in order to seek new employment opportunities.
According to the Census Bureau, 1.6 million women older than 35
are currently enrolled in college. This is nearly twice the number
of men that age so enrolled. (But even college-educated workers
are losing ground.5) White, native-born men now make
up less than one-third of the U.S. labor force. As women and minorities
compete successfully for jobs traditionally held by white men,
white men are inclined to blame the erosion of their opportunities
on affirmative action policies.
The U.S. economy
has been restructured: more jobs, lower incomes
What's really at work
here is the structural transformation of the U.S. economy over
the past quarter century. Goods-producing jobs, which provided
32% of non-agricultural employment in 1973, were only 21% of employment
in 1994. Service jobs rose from 68% to 79% in the same period.
In this shift, the high-wage jobs lost were replaced by low-wage
ones, such as those in retail trade. The fraction of jobs paying
below 125% of the poverty level wage rose from 36 percent of jobs
in 1973 to 41 percent in 1993.6 The effect of the structural
changes on wages has been reinforced by reduction in theproportion
of unionized workers and the decline in value of the minimum wage.7
High profits
no longer mean high wages
Despite what Business
Week calls "sizzling" profit growth in 19948 and
continued economic expansion, private sector wages fell 1.9 percent
in real terms in the year ending March 1995. This implies that
new jobs paid, on average, even less than existing jobs.9
It is not hard to see why. Stable manufacturing jobs are being
replaced by temporary jobs (the largest addition to new jobs in
1993 and 1994) and service jobs (waiters and bartenders were the
second largest addition to jobs). So greatly has employment changed
that there are now as many people processing poultry, "typically-minimum
wage," as there are steel workers. "No wonder real wages have
yet to recapture their pre-recession peaks."10 Even
highly-trained workers like computer programmers are facing replacement
by cheaper foreign workers.11 Global capitalism increasingly
pits workers against each other, forcing down wages and fringe
benefits, and creating nonunion workplaces.
Increased competition
for poor jobs
Another source of
employment problems has been the rise in the average level of
unemployment. While in the mid-1960's, it is estimated that there
were 2.5 unemployed persons for every vacant job, by the late
1970's, this ratio had grown to 5.0. In New York, there are roughly
seven jobless people for every available job vacancy. In Harlem,
where about 40 percent of the population is below the poverty
line, nearly half of all people above age 18 are unemployed, underemployed
and/or involuntarily outside the formal labor market. Competition
is fierce even for low wage service employment. In Harlem's fast
food industry, for example, the ratio of job applicants to hires
is about 14 to one.12
In May 1995, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 7.5 million
Americans "officially" unemployed, with the black unemployment
rate more than double that for whites. There were, however, 4.5
million part-time workers who wanted full-time work, but could
not find it. There were also another 6.5 million people who wanted
a job but were not actively looking, for a variety of reasons.13
When nineteen million people who desire employment aren't
able to get it, along with millions more who don't earn enough
to bring them and their families above the poverty line, an environment
of political scapegoating and social hostility is created. Blacks,
Latinos, women and others are blamed for declining real incomes,
unemployment and the loss of job advancement. Yet overturning
affirmative action programs and policies will do little to reverse
these economic trends for white male workers. While saying no
to affirmative action may be one way for disappointed workers
to handle their resentment, the basic forces that are destroying
jobs and lowering wages will persist even if affirmative action
is abolished.
This is why the advocates
of affirmative action must carefully link their struggle for social
justice with efforts to achieve full employment. I say "carefully"
precisely because many neoliberals and conservatives want to sacrifice
race-based reforms in favor of class-based programs which address
economic disadvantage. Affirmative action is not an anti-poverty
program. It was never designed to create jobs and it is no substitute
for job creation.
But the interests
of people who have traditionally experienced discrimination and
the concerns of those who are fearful of losing their jobs are
connected. Unless the total number of decent jobs is
significantly increased for everybody, millions of white male
workers will tend to see affirmative action as the enemy. Progressive
political initiatives like affirmative action are always more
acceptable when economic opportunities are expanding.
Notes:
1. Lawrence
Mishel and Jared Bernstein, The State of Working America, 1994-95,
p. 188.
2. Economic
Report of the President 1994, Table B-31
3. Mishel
and Bernstein, p. 34.
4. Economic
Report of the President.
5. Mishel
and Bernstein, p. 143.
6. Calculated
from Mishel and Bernstein, Table 3.10. It would have taken $6.93
per hour, working year-round, full-time in 1993 to earn the official
poverty income for a family of four, but many people earning a
sufficient hourly wage were working only part-time.
7. See
Uncommon Sense #10 on the minimum wage.
8. February
27, 1995, p. 43.
9. Chemical
Bank, Financial Digest, July 24, 1995.
10.
Financial Digest, January 23, 1995.
11.
"Skilled Workers Watch Jobs Go Overseas," New York Times,
August 28, 1995.
12.
Katherine Newman and Chauncy Lennon, "The Job Ghetto," The
American Prospect, Summer, 1995.
13.
See Uncommon Sense #4, "Employment Statistics: Letôs
Tell the Whole Story."
___________________Editor:
June Zaccone, Economics (Emer.), Hofstra University
The
National Jobs for All Coalition is a project of the Council on
International and Public Affairs
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