It is a fight to level the playing field to be able to compete for jobs and careers on the basis of skills and make available apprentice training to all. In 1973 Al Percy launched a class action lawsuit to give workers like him a chance to better their lot in life. It would also ensure the availability of skilled workers to build the infrastructure of the future.
Case 1:21-cv-01421-NGG Case MDL No. 3011 Document 1 25-6 Filed 03/17/21 Filed 06/24/21 Page 12 Page of 154 12 of PageID 154 #: 268 the U.S. Constitution. Conkling was instrumental to not only implementing emancipation which was granted by the 13th Amendment, but also equal protection of the laws afforded to all persons by the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment, drafted by committee, was ratified in 1866. Conkling was a principal contributor on the Committee drafting the 14th Amendment and its equal protection and due process clauses. Conkling tried to pursue the Lincoln vision, but the 10 years after Lincoln’s assassination, the 10 years following Lincoln’s vision of apprenticeship for freed people, were 10 years of anarchy and lawlessness which brought President Ulysses S. Grant and his close friend Conkling to utter frustration. Reconstruction was failing. Conkling and Grant accomplished the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 which is now codified at 42 U.S.C. 1983 with its companion sections 42 U.S.C. 1981 and 42 U.S.C. 1985, to provide a remedy against abuse of government authority and to enforce the provisions of the United States Constitution. It was then that US Senator Francis Kernan, on an Electoral Commission to settle the Presidential Election of 1876, cast a deciding vote to accomplishing the compromise of 1877 to preserve the Union, end Reconstruction, and bring the southern states behind a compromise presidential candidate - Rutherford B. Hayes. Apprenticeship for freed people was lost, the apprenticeship plank of Reconstruction was abandoned in the compromise of 1877 which ended Reconstruction. Conkling had declined a seat on the committee knowing what the outcome was sure to be – there would be an abandonment of all efforts to provide equality. Conkling later became lost as a dark figure of graft and corruption at the New York City Customs House, finally dying in the blizzard of 1888 walking from his office at Wall Street to Union Square. A sorry end, Conkling lost the fervor of his moral compass. Frederick Douglas, one of the first emerging slave to civil rights leaders, an apprentice himself mentored by Conkling, eulogized Conkling: “the country’s loss is great, but let us hope that men will yet be found as true to the cause of justice, liberty and equality”. Apprenticeship did not again resurface for the benefit of freed persons until the Percy Class sued in 1973 to eliminate discrimination in economic opportunity, eliminate segregation and eliminate disparate opportunity. The Percy v. Brennan lawsuit followed as a result of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Percy as a Class now complains that if the Class had gotten what was long ago a vision called apprenticeship, a vision not fulfilled even 154 years later, the world would be a much different place today. Franklin Roosevelt Apprenticeship was not formalized as a federally adopted structured program until the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937, and even then, was not used as an 12
Case 1:21-cv-01421-NGG Case MDL No. 3011 Document 1 25-6 Filed 03/17/21 Filed 06/24/21 Page 13 Page of 154 13 of PageID 154 #: 269 opportunity to teach skills to disadvantaged persons. In 1937, the Congress passed the National Apprenticeship Act (29 U.S.C. 50), also known as "the Fitzgerald Act." The Act established a national advisory committee whose task was to research and draft regulations to establish minimum standards for apprenticeship programs. The Act was later amended to permit the United States Department of Labor to issue regulations protecting the health, safety and general welfare of apprentices, and to encourage the use of contracts in the hiring and employment of them. Much like FDR’s Work Projects Administration (WPA), which put the unskilled to work building America’s airports, schools, and highways, apprenticeship programs can once again train the unskilled to build today’s infrastructure. The WPA maintained and increased working skills; and it enabled the unskilled to take their rightful places in public or in private employment. The Fitzgerald Act is administered by the Employment and Training Administration in the Department of Labor. Regulations banning racial, ethnic, religious, age and gender discrimination in apprenticeship programs are located at Title 29, CFR Part 30, but did little to foster affirmative action for equal employment. Unfortunately, even though apprenticeship was formalized as a federally adopted structured program under the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937, it was not used as an opportunity to teach skills to disadvantaged persons. Lyndon B. Johnson President Johnson is credited with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and LBJ’s Executive Order 11246. The term affirmative action arose from Johnson’s 1965 commencement speech at predominantly black Howard University when speaking about the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Johnson declared that equality has to be actual equality, not equality in name, when he said: “You do not take a man who, for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying you are free to compete with all the others, and still justly believe you have been completely fair. Thus, it is not enough to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity--not just legal equity but human ability--not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and a result.” Equal opportunity at its core carries the simple mandate that opportunities should be open to all on the basis of competence alone. This complaint is that the Percy Class 13
