Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company

Chapter Eight: No Gold Watch for Jim Crow’s Retirement

chapter eight No Gold Watch for Jim Crow’s Retirement DURING THE LATE 1950S demand for Hughes Tool’s drilling products dropped dramatically. According to a monthly company report, the Hughes rig count, which kept track of the number of drilling rigs in operation, between August, 1957, and July, 1958, the number of rigs operating throughout the world dropped from 2,716 to 1,957. In 1957 the company manufactured 2,500 drilling bits a day; in 1959 the number fell to 1,600.1 In response to the drop-off in its business Hughes Tool reduced its workforce. Between 1959 and 1961 the company eliminated 600 hourly positions and the number of employees stabilized at 2,000, of which 1,600 were whites and 400 were black.2 Hughes Tool also diversified. Two of its new ventures included subcontracting machine repair and rebuilding work for government contractors in the space program and supplying specialized products for the Atomic Energy Commission .3 Hughes Tool’s management hoped that securing government contracts would help the company weather the downturn and lead to more work in the future, but federal work presented one major problem: it required that Hughes Tool carry out a policy of nondiscrimination that stemmed from Pres. John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order No. 10925 issued in April, 1961. Under the order Hughes Tool could possibly face disqualification from much-needed federal work because of its Jim Crow tradition and willingness to enter into segregated labor agreements with the Independent Metal Workers Union. Kennedy’s order called for an end to racial discrimination in employment and a broadening of opportunities for minorities throughout the country. It called for a program of affirmative action to be carried out by federal departments and agencies under supervision 163 of the newly formed President’s Committee of Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO). The PCEEO implemented a system to monitor employers’ compliance and withhold federal contracts from employers violating the order. Though much ballyhooed as a civil rights breakthrough, in practice the Kennedy Administration subverted Executive Order No. 10925 by including in it a program called “Plans for Progress.”4 Under Plans for Progress a government contractor could escape PCEEO scrutiny simply by signing a pledge promising to eliminate racial discrimination. Kennedy’s order created a Plans for Progress subcommittee of the PCEEO to monitor voluntary compliance. Chaired by Robert Troutman Jr., a political friend and ally of Georgia’s two racist U.S. senators William Russell and Herman Talmadge, the subcommittee proved more effective in protecting racial discrimination than in eliminating it. While Troutman successfully reined in the Plans for Progress program, Senators Russell and Talmadge, along with other in- fluential southern members of Congress, guaranteed the failure of the PCEEO by denying it adequate money and staff to investigate discrimination by government contractors. Government contractors soon discovered that they could continue discriminating against blacks with impunity by signing a Plan for Progress.5 A year after the order took effect the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) released a highly critical report of Plans for Progress. Herbert Hill the NAACP’s labor secretary authored the report and concluded that Kennedy’s executive order and Plans for Progress were little more than a public relations exercise aimed at publicizing token civil rights breakthroughs while leaving discrimination in place. He pointed out that Kennedy’s order lacked statutory powers and “was impotent when confronted by the powerful financial and political forces in control of industry.” This was especially true in the South, where “Negro workers continued to be victims of a tradition of white supremacy which is deeply rooted and gives way but slowly to the forces of social change.” Hill blamed weak federal policies, industrial management, and organized labor “for the continued existence of employment discrimination throughout the South.”6 But Kennedy’s executive order did create an atmosphere in which companies became more sensitive about charges of discrimination while still being able to evade mandates to abolish it. The order also made it easier for companies than for labor unions to evade responsibility for discrimination. The Plans for Progress program enabled gov164 chapter 8 ernment contractors to avoid responsibility for job discrimination by merely making a pro forma commitment to eliminate it. On the other hand, if the PCEEO did purse discrimination charges against a government contractor and the company had a collective bargaining agreement...