The Nation : Hiring Quotas Retained

The White House indicated that President Reagan will keep a 20-year-old executive order requiring affirmative action hiring goals for government contractors, sidestepping confrontations with blacks, women, Congress and private industry. Since August, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III--one of Reagan’s closest associates--has pushed for revising the landmark 1965 order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and endorsed by each of his successors. But after several meetings of a Cabinet subcommittee, where Labor Secretary William E. Brock III, among others, stridently opposed Meese, the issue has yet to reach Reagan’s desk and is not likely to, a White House official said.