IN THE SPRING of 1979 a short article in the Washington Post summarized the testimony before a House oversight committee of the director of a federal agency. In the course of questioning the director about his agency’s employment policies, the Post reported, a member of the committee had noted that 55 percent of the agency’s minority employees were employed in grades GS-7 or below. The director replied that a similar proportion of all the agency’s employees were in those grades.