M: Well, the company accepted the responsibility of making individuals available
 and of counseling them that their participation in community activities was
 looked at in the promotion scheme as well as just the way that they shuffled
 paper within the company. The company has always urged its employees to
 be active in community affairs, and we continue to do that.

P: What was the company's policy as far as race was concerned? When you
 came in, we were just past a lot of the immediate problems of civil rights, but
 we were still very much in it in the late sixties and early seventies. Have
 you had any problems? What has been the situation?

M: We have had a number of charges brought against us under the EEOC--Equal
 Employment Opportunity Commission--legislation, which you would expect
 for a large company. We have never had one that stuck. Now, we have had
 to counsel, and in fact release some people, whose individual attitudes were
 not consonant with the present public view. We have made a concerted effort
 to try to find adequately trained minority personnel. The big problem is that
 there are not many adequately trained minority personnel, and those who are
 in this category are sought by companies that pay two and three times the
 salaries that we do. We have worked with engineering schools and other
 sources to interest people in the kind of functions that we use. We have tried
 to promote people within the company, giving preference to minorities who
 are anywhere close to having the same skills as other people have. We do
 not have any minority officers; we do not have any who is close to having
 skills to be an officer.

P: That is true for blacks and Hispanics?

M: Oh, no. I am speaking primarily of blacks. I received an award many years
 ago for employing more Hispanic engineers than any other company in the
 world. That is interesting because this was supposedly an occasion that was
 not just confined to Spanish-speakers. When I got there I found I was the
 only person there who spoke English. I was between two ladies who only
 spoke Spanish, and it is very difficult to discuss someone's grandchildren in
 a language that you do not understand. I delivered my speech in English,
 which they did not understand, but it was subsequently translated into
 Spanish.

 We have had a program with the University of Miami where we have sent
 M.B.A. candidates to them. We would let them off on Friday and they would
 attend classes on Saturday, and they would finish an M.B.A. in three or four
 years, or something like that. A disproportionate number of Hispanics took
 this, and some of the smartest engineers that we have are Hispanics. At the
 present time Florida Power and Light Company has four Hispanic officers,
 I think.

P: So you do have them in the top echelon.

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