Discriminations

No, this post isn’t really about backbone on Madison Avenue. If it were, I would have already written too much, since that would be shortest post ever written. Instead, what follows is about lack of backbone on Madison Avenue.

By way of preface, I’ve written before (here and here), about two years ago, about a witch hunt “diversity probe” of New York ad agencies by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights, which was shocked that right there in diversity city there weren’t more minorities working in the big advertising firms.

Now, as I mentioned in the first “here” above, there was what would have seemed to some observers to be a problem with the Human Rights Commission’s hounding of the ad agencies. This is the only regulation that would seem to give it any jurisdiction:

§8-107 Unlawful discriminatory practices. 1. Employment. It shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice:
(a) For an employer or an employee or agent thereof, because of the actual or perceived age, race, creed, color, national origin, gender, disability, marital status, sexual orientation or alienage or citizenship status of any person, to refuse to hire or employ or to bar or to discharge from employment such person or to discriminate against such person in compensation or in terms, conditions or privileges of employment.

As I wrote two years ago:

Hmm, that’s funny. I’ve re-read this provision several times, but I can’t find in it any requirement for an employer to have a “diverse” workforce, whatever that might mean. On the contrary, if words have meaning (an increasingly doubtful proposition, I suppose), I think “any person” who was not hired because of his or her race would have a strong cause of action.

O.K., now fast-forward to the present. Yesterday the New York Times noted with approval (what, you think NYT news articles don’t show approval and disapproval?) that “Madison Ave. Charts Some Progress in Meeting Diversity Hiring Goals.”

Shhh! Do you hear that loud whooshing noise? That’s the collective sigh of relief uttered by DISCRIMINATIONS readers worldwide who’ve just learned that those brave souls on Madison Avenue resisted having dread quotas imposed on them.

One such relieved reader was the estemed Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, who sent me the following email (quoted with permission):

No Quotas Here!

Headline in today’s New York Times: “Madison Ave. Charts Some Progress in Meeting Diversity Hiring Goals.” I was a little concerned by the headline. These “goals” have been set by 15 ad agencies, and we are always told by the diversity industry that no employer uses racial quotas these days, because everyone knows they are illegal. But is there any way that these goals might turn out to be quotas?

The goals were expressed in terms of percentages of new hires who were black, Hispanic or Asian-American. …[T]he15 agencies had hoped that 18 percent of the total managerial and professional employees they hired last year would be minorities, and the actual percentage was higher, at 25 percent.

But no quotas, I guess — that would be illegal.

Only one agency, Merkley & Partners, part of the Omnicom Group, missed both its goals, while four others — three of them also owned by Omnicom — missed one goal each. Omnicom executives said that in some cases, the goals were missed because there were no hires, period, in the categories in question.

But no mention of illegal quotas, thank goodness!

The 15 agencies accepted the reporting process as part of a binding agreement [with the New York City Human Rights Commission] reached in September 2006 with 16 of them. They also agreed they could be punished with fines for failing to achieve more diversity in the hiring of senior employees.

But that doesn’t make a goal a quota, of course, because that would be illegal.

Under the terms of the deal with the commission, the agencies said they would hire outside consultants if they did not meet their goals.

That doesn’t make the goal a quota either. I finished the article. Nope, no quotas here.

Whew! What a relief. As we all know, “goals” are often merely a camouflage term meant to disguise quotas, but fortunately neither Madison Avenue, world capital of word play, nor the New York Times, the newspaper of record, would ever fall for such a ruse.