From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Affirmative Action should be Dead
Date: 6 Jan 1993 14:59:17 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer Inc, Marlboro MA
Distribution: usa
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: gondolin.pubs.stratus.com

In article <1993Jan6.090018.23430@Princeton.EDU>  
niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:
> In <1ic8jdINNfgg@transfer.stratus.com>  
jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com writes:
> >In theory, this way of doing things shouldn't be much of a problem
> >if everybody is being reasonable.  Unfortunately, all too often
> >people aren't. Quite often government regulators of various
> >sorts take an adversarial attitude. They don't come into
> >a company saying "we want to make sure there are no
> >problems and want to help you fix any that you have" but
> >rather "we know you are lying scum and we're here to smash
> >you."  The EPA agent in the movie Ghostbusters was a very
> >accurate portrayal of many government regulators.
> 
> You're not going to hear me defending the integrity of government
> regulators, but I think it goes the *other* way much more often.   
That
> is, that they cozy up to the people they're supposed to be  
regulating.
> Like, say, the S&L regulators.

I don't know if it goes the other way "much more often" but it
does so at times, and that, too is a problem.
> 
> In the particular case we're talking about, I don't believe that  
there
> are any actual regulators for job discrimination.  I don't think  
you have 
> agents like the EPA guy going around checking the books to make  
sure 
> you've hired the right mix of people -- I think that only if  
someone 
> files a complaint does anything happen.

No, but I do think you have the following scenario.  Company X
fires someone.  Said person then contacts the appropriate agency
to say that they were fired because of race/sex/age/etc.  
The government regulator then comes in and says to the
company "You are guilty of descrimination.  You can settle up
now or you can go to court to prove that you did not
descriminate."  Going to court costs money.  At times companies
will hold on to sub-par employees because they fear this
scenario.

I have heard cases of companies firing people who weren't doing
their job, then having to spend tens of thousands of dollars
to defend their action.  While I agree this is anecdotal and
probably happens in only a small percentage of the cases, what
we need to do is try to fix things so that it doesn't happen 
at all.

> 
> And I think what generally happens (in real life, not the movies),  
is
> that the company takes the EPA to court and delays any regulatory  
action
> for years and years.
> 

Sometimes, but often not.  I think the problem is that 
many regulators do feel their job is to find things that
are wrong and order companies to fix them, rather than working
with companies to make things better.  

I have a friend who used to work at a nuclear power plant. He said
that anytime an NRC inspector was coming, they made sure to
do some minor thing wrong. If they did everything right, the
inspector would spend days at the plant, getting progressively
crankier and nastier to everyone around him, since he was sure
that he was dealing with a bunch of dishonest crooks who must
be hiding something somewhere.




--
Jim Mann            
Stratus Computer   jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com  

Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism