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The Trump administration's plan to shrink the federal government is targeting multiple civil rights efforts. At the Labor Department, a draft proposal would nearly dismantle an office that investigates discrimination by federal contractors. NPR's Andrea Hsu looks at what this could mean for workers. And here is where I want to let you know that this report includes descriptions of sexual assault.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Unless you're a company that does work for the federal government, you've likely never heard of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Its primary role has been enforcing an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 at the height of the civil rights era. It required most federal contractors to take steps to ensure women and people of color have the same opportunities as others - that there aren't barriers to employment or to promotions.
JENNY YANG: Not all companies are willing to look under the hood voluntarily to see whether they have a problem.
HSU: Jenny Yang oversaw this work at the Labor Department during the Biden administration. She notes federal contractors employ a whopping 20% of the U.S. workforce. So the old executive order has been a big deal. It's given rise to groups like Chicago Women in Trades whose mission is getting women in the door. For decades, they've trained women to become plumbers, electricians, pipe fitters, sheet metal workers. In recent years, the group has worked hard to meet what's expected to be a construction boom, with billions of new dollars approved for federal infrastructure projects. Jayne Vellinga is the group's executive director.
JAYNE VELLINGA: We have doubled our programs. We've doubled our staff. We've really tried to meet this moment.
HSU: At the heart of this, she says, is ensuring women have a path to good-paying, middle-class jobs. In Chicago, a union carpenter earns $55 an hour. But now this progress is threatened. Trump revoked Johnson's executive order on his second day in office. Lauren Sugarman, now Vellinga's colleague at Chicago Women in Trades, is mourning its end.
LAUREN SUGARMAN: It is a huge loss - what's happening now.
HSU: In 1980, Sugarman was enrolled in a vocational program aimed at getting more women and African Americans into the steel mills. Then an industrial giant came calling - a well-known company that had won a federal contract to maintain and repair elevators for the Chicago Housing Authority. Under Johnson's executive order, the company had to at least try to recruit women. Sugarman recalls her interview.
SUGARMAN: I always called it a dis-interview. It was basically, you don't want this job. This job is too dirty for you. This job is too dangerous for a girl. You really won't like it.
HSU: She took the job anyway. It was hard work, and she did encounter problems. Sugarman says men grabbed her breasts and made rape jokes in packed elevators. But she stuck with the company for six years, eventually working on other projects, including at Sears Tower.
SUGARMAN: There were a hundred elevators and escalators in the building. And at that point, it was the tallest building in the world.
HSU: Now she wonders if the small forays that women have made in the trades will simply vanish. The Labor Department did not respond to NPR's request for comment. Now, Jayne Vellinga will tell you - the 1965 executive order and the government's work to enforce it only went so far.
VELLINGA: None of these things were fantastic. I want to be clear about that. There was more of an emphasis on checking boxes, but it was something.
HSU: Now she fears some federal contractors won't bother to consider women at all.
VELLINGA: They are not civil rights organizations. They're builders. For how many people will this fall off the priority list?
HSU: Plenty of women have proven they can do the work and do it well, she says, but you can prove nothing if you can't get your foot in the door.
Andrea Hsu, NPR News.
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