![]() group on account of"Ī de facto racial imbalance in the employer's workforce. "shall be interpreted to require any employer. (c) This conclusion is further reinforced by examination of the language and legislative history of § 703(j) of Title VII, which provides that nothing contained in Title VII 418, cannot be interpreted as an absolute prohibition against all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action efforts to hasten the elimination of such vestiges. "employers and unions to self-examine and to self-evaluate their employment practices and to endeavor to eliminate, so far as possible, the last vestiges of an unfortunate and ignominious page in this country's history,"Īlbemarle Paper Co. In view of the legislative history, the very statutory words intended as a spur or catalyst to cause Congress' primary concern in enacting the prohibition against racial discrimination in Title VII was with the plight of the Negro in our economy, and the prohibition against racial discrimination in employment was primarily addressed to the problem of opening opportunities for Negroes in occupations which have been traditionally closed to them. ![]() (b) Examination of those sources makes clear that an interpretation of §§ 703(a) and (d) that forbids all race-conscious affirmative action would bring about an end completely at variance with the purpose of the statute, and must be rejected. 459, and, thus, the prohibition against racial discrimination in §§ 703(a) and (d) must be read against the background of the legislative history of Title VII and the historical context from which the Act arose. " thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers," Holy Trinity Church v. 273, which held, in a case not involving affirmative action, that Title VII protects whites as well as blacks from certain forms of racial discrimination, is misplaced, since the Kaiser-USWA plan is an affirmative action plan voluntarily adopted by private parties to eliminate traditional patterns of racial segregation. (a) Respondent Weber's reliance upon a literal construction of the statutory provisions and upon McDonald v. Title VII's prohibition in §§ 703(a) and (d) against racial discrimination does not condemn all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action plans. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that all employment preferences based upon race, including those preferences incidental to bona fide affirmative action plans, violated Title VII's prohibition against racial discrimination in employment.ġ. The District Court held that the affirmative action plan violated Title VII, entered judgment in favor of the plaintiff class, and granted injunctive relief. race" in hiring and in the selection of apprentices for training programs. Thereafter, respondent Weber, one of those white production workers, instituted this class action in Federal District Court, alleging that, because the affirmative action program had resulted in junior black employees' receiving training in preference to senior white employees, respondent and other similarly situated white employees had been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of §§ 703(a) and(d) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that make it unlawful to "discriminate. During the plan's first year of operation, seven black and six white craft trainees were selected from the plant's production workforce, with the most senior black trainee having less seniority than several white production workers whose bids for admission were rejected. ![]() Pursuant to the national agreement, Kaiser, rather than continuing its practice of hiring trained outsiders, established a training program to train its production workers to fill craft openings, selecting trainees on the basis of seniority, with the proviso that at least 50% of the trainees were to be black until the percentage of black skilled craft workers in the plant approximated the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. ![]() This litigation arose from the operation of the affirmative action plan at one of Kaiser's plants where, prior to 1974, only 1.83% of the skilled craft workers were black, even though the local workforce was approximately 39% black. The agreement included an affirmative action plan designed to eliminate conspicuous racial imbalances in Kaiser's then almost exclusively white craft work forces by reserving for black employees 50% of the openings in in-plant craft training programs until the percentage of black craft workers in a plant is commensurate with the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. (Kaiser) entered into a master collective bargaining agreement covering terms and conditions of employment at 15 Kaiser plants. In 1974, petitioners United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and Kaiser Aluminum Chemical Corp. ![]()
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