The Association of Personnel Agencies of New York announced today that it will embark on a three-phase program to combat discrimination in job orders by the State’s nearly 1,300 private employment agencies. The program, which was worked out in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the New York State Commission on Human Rights, will be addressed to the ethnic minority groups subject to job discrimination, to the employment agencies and to their client companies.
In announcing the program, Anthony Kane, president of the APANY, noted that the Association was “deeply concerned” about charges that some member agencies accept discriminatory job orders. The first phase of the program, he said, will attack the problem directly through institutional advertising on radio and television designed to regain the confidence of minority groups and “to convince qualified minority group job applicants that it is to their advantage to avail themselves of the placement services offered by private employment agencies.”
The second phase, directed to the State’s private employment agencies will be primarily educational and will include intensified civil rights seminars such as those sponsored by the APANY in 1965 and 1967 for the training of licensees and job placement counselors. “Thus we will spell out more clearly the nature of the offenses being committed and train as many in this industry as we can reach in the unequivocal refusal of all future discriminatory job orders,” Mr. Kane said.
In the third phase of the program “we intend to put all employers on notice that private employment agencies are equal opportunity employers, that their entire staffs are trained in all aspects of civil rights laws governing their operations, and that all personnel are pledged to refusing and reporting discriminatory job orders if they imply a preference for race, color, sex or national origin,” Mr. Kane said. Toward that end, the APANY will prepare printed material which all agencies in the state will be asked to distribute to their client companies.
Mr. Kane said that within a short time his association will participate in a survey of New York State private employment agencies to test the results of its program. The test will be conducted in conjunction with the State Commission for Human Rights and the ADL.
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