Use of Enforcement Techniques in Eliminating Glass Ceiling Barriers

Glass Ceiling ReportGlassCeilingBackground9UseofEnforcement.pdf: 3253 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Employment and Occupational Advance Under Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action is not only supposed to help move minorities and females into employment, it is also supposed to help move them up the job ladder, and it is this second goal that is perhaps the more controversial. Studies of Affirmative Action during thel ate 1960's and early 1910's found it generally ineffective in the white-collar and skilled occupations. Using disaggregated employment data in a new sample of nearly 10,000 establishments,this study finds that Affirmative Action was generally successful during the late 1910's in increasing minority employment in skilled white-collar occupations as well as in unskilled jobs.

Splitting Blacks?: Affirmative Action and Earnings Inequality within and Across Races

Critics have said that affirmative action is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. In particular, it has been argued that if affirmative action helps anybody, it helps only the highly educated cream of the minority population, and may perversely work to the detriment of the unskilled and uneducated. This study finds that minority males earn higher wages in sectors where affirmative action is prevalent, indicating that it has increased the demand for minority males. I also find evidence of this effect for both the lowly and highly educated, suggesting that affirmative action under the Executive Order has not contributed to the economic bifurcation of the minority community.

In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: The Extent of Frictional and Structural Unemployment

A major cause of unemployment, distinct from inadequate aggregate demand and instability of workers, is the instability of jobs themselves. In an average year about one in every nine jobs disappear and one in every eight is newly created. This is based on an analysis of year to year employment changes among the private employers of Wisconsin between 1977 and 1982. This job loss may account for roughly 2.2 percentage points, or one quarter, of the average unemployment rate. As much as half of the transitions of workers from employment to non-employment may be accounted for by the destruction of jobs. Establishments appear to adjust their employment quickly, largely within one year. Employment growth rates one year apart are negatively correlated, and thereafter nearly follow a random walk. Establishments exhibit considerable heterogeneity in employment growth rates, with some positive cyclical variations, but little industry effect. Employment shifts across establishments within an industry are of far greater magnitude than shifts across industry lines.

Carrots and Sticks: Pay, Supervision and Turnover

Large and persistent differences across industries in wages paid for given occupations have commonly been observed. Recently, the efficiency wage model (EWM) has been advanced as an explanation for these wage differentials. The shirking version of the EWM assumes a trade-off between self-supervision and external supervision. The turnover version assumes turnover is costly to the firm. Variation across firms in the cost of monitoring/shirking or turnover then are hypothesized to account for wage variation across firms for homogeneous workers. This paper presents empirical evidence of the trade-off of wage premiums for supervisory intensity and turnover. A new sample of 200 firms in one sector in one state in 1982 is analyzed. Little evidence is found to support either version of EWM. The substantial variation in wages for narrowly defined occupations across firms remains largely unexplained.

The Impact of Affirmative Action on Employment

Affirmative action under Executive Order 11246 ranks among the most controversial of domestic federal policies.This study asks whether affirmative action has been successful in promoting the employment of minorities and females. It compares the change in demographics between 1974 and 1980 at more than sixty-eight thousand establishments, and finds that both minority and female employment have increased faster at establishments subject to affirmative action. Compliance reviews, while not well targeted are also found to have been effective.

Unions and Equal Employment Opportunity

This paper analyzes differences in the growth of minority and female employment between union and non-union manufacturing plants in California during the late 1970's, In this sector, unionized plants do not exhibit anymore gross employment discrimination than do nonunion plants against black or Hispanic men, or against black or white women, despite ther ecessions of the 1970's that displaced low seniority workers. Black males actually enjoy faster growth of employment share in unionized plants, suggesting that Title VII has been effective in increasing opportunities for blacks. This may help explain why unionization, though decreasing in the private sector, has been increasing among blacks. The role played by unions in mediating affirmative action regulations is also examined. There are significant differences across particular unions, especially between craft and industrial unions, within industries that correspond with each union's public record on EEO. Black employment increasesmost rapidly in industries with a long history of black employment, in plants organized by unions that take a liberal position towards EEO, and in industries with a large union wage effect. As least in California manufacturing during this period,the belief that unions have hindered minority and female employment does not seem to hold true for industrial unions.

On the Size Distribution of Employment and Establishments

Recent arguments that employment growth occurs disproportionately at small establishments are fundamentally misleading because they confuse regression to the mean with structural shifts in the size distribution of establishments and with an aging effect within cohorts. The net growth usually observed in aggregate studies hides the gross flows; 13 percent of the jobs in existence in 1974 had disappeared by 1980, while 18 percent of the 1980 jobs had not existed six years previously. The variation observed here in labor demand over time within individual establishments may help to explain unemployment.

Affirmative Action as Earnings Redistribution: The Targeting of Compliance Reviews

Affirmative action may be broadly conceived of as pursuing either the goal of reducing discrimination or that of redistributing jobs and earnings. I attempt to infer the ends of affirmative action policy by analyzing the historical record of enforcement. Optimal enforcement strategies are developed for both the anti-discrimination and the earnings redistribution models, and then compared with new data on the actual targeting of affirmative action compliance reviews during the late 1970s. I find that establishments with very low proportions of minority or female workers are not significantly more likely to be reviewed, but that white-collar intensive establishments are more likely to be reviewed. This indicates the shortcomings of the anti-discrimination model inexplaining the OFCCP's behavior, and suggests the potential usefulness of the earnings redistribution model.

Union Maids: Unions and the Female Workforce

How have women fared in unions in recent years? The major findings of this paper are that unions have been more beneficial for women in the public sector than in the private sector, and that unionism for women is primarily a public sector wriite collar phenomenon distinguished from that of males. According to our analysis:(1) Women have come to be an increasingly large proportion of the unionized work force, and are critical in the one area in which unions have recently succeeded --the public sector.(2) In the public sector and in white collar occupations where women unionists are concentrated, unions raise women's wages more than they raise the wages of men.(3) In the private sector unions have essentially the same effect on women in wages, turnover, employment and so forth, and do not deter affirmative action programs to raise female employment. (4) Comparable worth presents a rare confluence of interests of unions in search of members, particularly in the public sector,and women in search of higher wages, and will likely continue to be used by both especially within the confines of collective bargaining.