Black Employee of AP&L Charges Utility With Racism

A black employee of Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L) is currently engaged in a lawsuit charging that the testing procedures AP&L uses in hiring discriminate against blacks.

Henry Baker, a laborer at AP&L's Cecil Lynch steam plant at North Little Rock, Ark., also contends that company requirements and union contracts effectively bar blacks from promotion.

Not This Year

Baker's suit was filed in Little Rock's Federal-District Court, which has been in recess since September 6. The proceedings will not resume until early next year, a spokesman for the judge in the case, G. Thomas Eisele, said yesterday.

Baker originally filed his suit in October 1970. It first came to court in mid-July of this year, but Eisele postponed it after a week. Court proceedings resumed in early September for two days, before the current recess was called.

AP&L officials have testified in the case that:

*no blacks were hired in the Cecil Lynch plant between 1959 and 1970, while 44 whites were hired during the same period;

*by 1970, blacks still worked only in the plant's two lowest job categories, laborer and janitor;

*in 1970, the average salary for white AP&L power plant employees was $8000, while the average salary for blacks was $4000; and,

*in AP&L's summer job programs for engineering students, all the people hired so far have been white, while summer laborer jobs have gone to both blacks and whites. AP&L says its summer job hiring is done on a first-come-first-served basis.

Two-Part Suit

Baker's suit in is two parts. One asks that he be promoted and receive back pay for the 25 years he has worked as a laborer, and the other, a class action filed on behalf of all blacks, asks the court to force AP&L to revamp its testing procedures.

Baker says the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which all AP&L job applicants must take, is racially discriminatory. A 1970 study compiled by the Wonderlic company confirms that the test has "a negative racial effect."

However, AP&L officials have produced records showing that in 1972 black applicants did better on the Wonderlic test than whites.

AP&L has also testified that about 30 per cent of the plant employees hired since 1970 have been black. AP&L's total work force is about 9 per cent black.