State’s Utilities Assailed for Record on Promoting Women, Minorities

A wave of restructurings that has sharply reduced employment at some of California’s largest utilities has not cut deeply into the ranks of female and minority executives, company officials testified Friday at a hearing in Los Angeles of the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce.

But the officials reported that the number of non-whites and women in top jobs at the big power and telecommunications firms remains minute, prompting the committee’s chairperson, Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles), and a spokeswoman for a coalition of minority groups to lambaste the companies for their performance.

Moore said all the utilities deserved an “F” for their record in promoting women and minorities.

Slightly more generous was Anita Del Rio, a vice president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. She testified that a coalition of six minority organizations flunked only two of the utilities--Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. The highest grade was a “C” for Pacific Bell.

The scores, based on the percentage of minorities among utility employees earning more than $75,000, “demonstrate the embarrassingly poor management and upper management records of the utilities towards minorities and women,” Del Rio said.

Moore, who for years has applied pressure on the utilities to strengthen their affirmative action programs and do more contracting with minority- and woman-owned businesses, said even the best performance among the utilities was nothing of which to be proud.

“I used to get in trouble when I got a ‘C,’ ” she said. “But I had high expectations.”

All the utilities that offered testimony--Edison, SDG&E;, GTE California, Southern California Gas Co. and Pacific Bell, each of which is among the state’s seven largest--said they had actually increased the numbers of women and minorities in their upper salary ranks even as they sliced employment overall during the last two years.

Thousand Oaks-based GTE, for example, has cut employment more than 10% since 1987 but boosted the total of women and minorities earning more than $75,000 to 17 from 14 in the same period, according to Larry Mortensen, manager for staffing and development.

Increases Cited

“We’ve been trying to manage (staff cuts) in a way that will have minimal or no impact on our affirmative action program,” Mortensen testified.

Pacific Bell, the state’s largest utility, reported that from October, 1987--when the committee last met to review the utilities’ performance--till July, its tally of women earning more than $75,000 had grown to 90 from 70 and the count of minorities had climbed to 43 from 31. The company undertook a large-scale early retirement program and a restructuring during the same period.

Moore, though, remained skeptical. She said she had learned that a number of minority executives at Pacific Bell had recently quit, having grown frustrated by their lack of opportunities at the phone company.

“What we’re being told is that, as you go through this restructuring, there’s too many missed opportunities,” she said. “It’s a continuation of business as usual.”

Del Rio scolded the utilities for maintaining what she labeled an “essentially all white male upper management club.”

In written testimony based on statistics reported by the utilities to the California Public Utilities Commission, she singled out Rosemead-based Edison for especially strong criticism.

No blacks and just one Latino have climbed into the ranks of the electric company’s 100 highest paid employees, she said, and only one black and two Latinos are among the 275 best paid. Only one woman ranks in the top 275, Del Rio added.

Making an Effort

That performance, along with similarly low numbers in a somewhat larger pool of managers, earned Edison an “F-” from the coalition of minority groups, the lowest score among the seven utilities.

“Madame Chairwoman,” Del Rio said to Moore, who is black, “you and I, as minority women, are not qualified to be Edison material.”

Robert Hine, Edison’s manager of equal opportunity, said the company had identified “a significant number” of women and minorities as candidates for promotion to upper management. “Even though we got an ‘F-,’ ” he said, “I think we should get at least a ‘B+’ for effort.”

Moore said the utilities need to put more emphasis on executive development programs and to try to remove some of the subjectivity from promotion decisions.

“One of the real concerns I have with the utilities and the way they do business is that much of what happens to people depends on not what you know, but who you know,” she said.