Quotas at AT&T

American Telephone and Telegraph Co., the nation's largest private employer, has often been assailed by civil rights and women's rights leaders, who charge that the company has lagged in hiring and promoting blacks and members of other minorities. Yet the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly forbids any such discriminatory hiring policies by Government contractors like AT&T. Last week the General Services Administration, which monitors contractors' employment practices, worked out what it called a "landmark" agreement with AT&T. Under the new pact, the company will hire and advance thousands of women workers and minority-group members over the next 15 months.

AT&T, which now employs one million people, promised that it will promote a total of 50,000 women to better-paying jobs. Women have traditionally been telephone operators (average wage for a 40-hour week: $125). Their new posts will include phone installers, line workers and cable splicers' helpers. Of the jobs going to women, 10% will be management posts, such as chief operators, regional office managers and sales force chiefs. Altogether, 6,600 men from certain qualifying minority groups--which the company defines as blacks, Spanish-surnamed people, Orientals and American Indians--will be moved into higher-paying field positions and other technical openings, and 12% of these new openings will be in management.

In addition, each of the company's offices will hire women and minority-group members for beginning jobs at a rate of 1 1/2 times their current representation in the local labor force. What about the hiring and promoting of men who do not fit into the definition of "minority" group? Says a company spokesman: "For them, it will certainly mean more competition."

Labor Secretary James Hodgson denies that the agreement represents the use of employment quotas, a practice that President Nixon says he rejects. Hodgson asserts that the Administration is merely setting "goals." For many businessmen, faced with relentless Government pressure to hire precise numbers of certain minority-group members, the distinction between goals and quotas is often difficult to discern.

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