Minority Groups to Keep Heat on Texaco

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Minority groups said Tuesday they would continue a boycott against Texaco Inc. because the company had made little progress in preparing a plan to improve its minority policies.

The groups, led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said they would step up action in two weeks and call for stockholders to sell their Texaco shares if the company failed to come up with a good blueprint.

"The boycotting is extended until such time that we have received a concrete and meaningful plan with goals and timetables," Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said after a briefing by Texaco officials on their efforts to prepare a plan.

The groups began their boycott but called off picketing of Texaco service stations 10 days ago after the company reached a $176 million settlement of a racial-bias suit.

At the same time, they pressed the company to lay out by Dec. 12 specific targets for boosting minority employment, contracting with minority-owned vendors, investing in minority-owned venture capital funds and improving environmental protection in minority residential areas near Texaco facilities.

"If, in fact, 15 days from now things have not progressed any further, I would consider that a breach of a commitment that (Texaco Chairman) Peter Bijur made to myself, to Rev. Jackson ... and that we would have reached a point of no return," NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said at a news conference.

Mfume said his group was readying a campaign to urge pension funds, state and local governments, and colleges and universities to divest themselves of Texaco holdings and would launch it if Texaco presented an "unacceptable plan" in mid-December.

Lowery said the company's director of employment and diversity, Edward Gadsden, promised to have more information on the number of members of minorities and women it had in management, policy-making and supervisory positions in the next week.

A Texaco spokesman said the company would have a blueprint for action ready by mid- to late December in line with what it had agreed to with the civil rights groups, and it would be counterproductive to release parts of the plan beforehand.

"When complete, it will be a plan with clear, definable goals and concrete timetables," the company said in a statement.