In the past few weeks, Mayor Daley’s commitment to racial fairness in the ranks of the Chicago police has been sharply questioned by critics. The source of their discontent is an arbitrator’s decision that a new police contract not include language permitting affirmative action in promotions to the rank of sergeant.
It’s unfortunate that the arbitrator reached that conclusion. For many years, police departments, Chicago’s included, avoided recruiting minority officers; while hiring policies have changed, the impact of the past can still be seen in management ranks.
In Chicago, only 5 percent of the sergeants are minorities. That’s not healthy for the department or the city, which benefits when the police force knows, and reflects, its ethnic and racial neighborhoods. The city must have the ability to achieve that balance and can’t be held hostage by a labor pact that prohibits it.
The Daley administration sought to include contract language that would permit the city to adopt “legally permissible affirmative action steps” for the promotion of officers, but the Fraternal Order of Police fought that move and won in arbitration.
Whether or not Daley fought hard enough for the hiring language is open to debate. The administration says it was a top priority. The union says the city made scant efforts to win the point.
The arbitrator found that affirmative action was “most important” to the city, but that health care cost containment and civilianization were even higher priorities. The city’s victories on those two economic issues made it more difficult to also award the city the affirmative action language, the arbitrator ruled.
Both the ruling and the mayor’s critics are off-base. Daley should be commended for his efforts to find fair methods to diversify the racial makeup of the police department. Two years ago, the city achieved a careful plan for police hiring designed to increase minority representation without denying qualified white applicants a chance to join the force.
The mayor also deserves credit now for pressing the arbitrator to reconsider his decision. The union should drop its opposition to the affirmative-action language and its demand that if the language is allowed, the union be compensated with added economic benefits.
Even if the city wins, it won’t be easy to build a promotion plan that is fair and complies with the federal 1991 Civil Rights Act. It should, however, have every opportunity to try.
