ENR’s coverage of race and equality in the construction industry passed through two major phases from the 1960s until the 1990s.
In the phase that lasted through much of the 1960s and 1970s, discrimination in the union locals and hiring halls occupied ENR’s editors and editorial writers. One editorial, from 1969, praised new federal equal employment opportunity regulations for federally aided highway projects. For the first time, the federal government was forcing contractors who accepted project awards to make contractual commitments to exercise their management prerogative in the hiring field—to use their “best efforts” to negotiate hiring hall clauses compatible with equal opportunity. That included hiring workers outside the hiring hall whenever a union failed to supply enough minority workers.