The Workplace: A Push for Fairness

President Clinton set the tone in June when he announced his "One America" race initiative. He launched a "national dialogue" on race and ordered agencies to come up with policies to address race-based problems.

Around the country and within the government, the initiative met with mixed reviews.

"This whole new agenda he's put together is excellent, but it's not going to solve the whole issue," said Oscar Eason Jr., president of Blacks in Government. "The people need to get behind him, but it's [just] the first step toward getting something done to create a better environment."

Just one month after Clinton released his plan, Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., called the problem of discrimination in the federal workforce "a festering sore that needs to be addressed." Irked by data indicating that minorities comprise only 11 percent of Senior Executive Service positions, Wynn and other supporters pledged to push for a redress of federal workplace discrimination.

"If we are serious about dealing with the problems of race in America, then the government must look in its own backyard--the federal workforce," Wynn told a crowd assembled on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in June.

Long criticized for its lack of diversity, the Interior Department answered Clinton's call by releasing a strategic plan for creating a department more representative of the civilian workforce. The plan instructs managers to develop written targeted recruitment plans for occupations with under-representation of minorities and people with disabilities.

Each Interior bureau will be required to conduct training for managers and supervisors on implementing the goals of the plan and on how to manage a diverse workforce.

Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi plans to meet with bureau heads on a quarterly basis to review progress in improving diversity. If a hostile work environment exists, the report says, managers and supervisors will be held accountable.

The Agriculture Department was also forced to deal with its legacy of discrimination head-on in 1997.

In February, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said that long-standing complaints of discrimination by farmers and USDA's own employees were intertwined. He appointed a civil rights action team to investigate complaints from both sides of the fence.

To speed up resolution of employee allegations of civil rights violations, Glickman appointed Pearlie S. Reed, an African-American career civil servant, as acting assistant secretary for administration, with beefed-up civil rights enforcement powers.

While Glickman believed he had the authority to address most of the employees' complaints, he, the civil rights action team and USDA lawyers concluded that Congress has to change some laws before USDA can improve its treatment of minority farmers.

"It's been a tough, frustrating period of time as we deal with issues that to some extent have been neglected for decades," Glickman said at a late December news conference. "We're laying the foundation for which I hope that the USDA will be viewed as a real federal civil rights leader." Employee groups and farmers' organizations, though, complained of slow progress in redressing their grievances.

At the other end of the spectrum, several members of Congress sought to overturn federal affirmative action policies. Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., introduced the "Civil Rights Act of 1997," which would prohibit discrimination and preferential treatment on the basis of race, color, national origin, or sex in federal actions.

"Affirmative action as it was originally perceived included nothing about preference," Canady said. "It is wrong for the federal government to divide the people of the U.S. into race and gender."

But in late December, a Pentagon-appointed panel proposed segregating men and women during military training, partly in an effort to cut down on highly publicized incidents of sexual harassment and misconduct.

The panel's report came several months after the report of an Army task force on sexual harassment that was formed in the wake of a sex scandal at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. After a comprehensive examination, the Army concluded that passive leadership allowed sexual misconduct and discrimination to run rampant throughout the ranks.

Sexual harassment crosses "gender, rank and racial lines" because the Army "lacks the institutional commitment" to treat men and women equally, the report found. The Army, with the backing of Defense Secretary William Cohen, prepared a comprehensive plan to reemphasize the importance of active leadership.

Meanwhile, at the VA, an internal survey of employees found that almost 40 percent of women and nearly 20 percent of men said they had received unwanted sexual attention in the past year. The most common scenario, reported by 19 percent of women and 7 percent of men, was someone putting his or her arm around an employee without consent.