In his 35 years as president of the St. Louis chapter of
the Coalition for Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), Lew Moye has seen a lot of
initiatives to increase diversity in construction.
There have been agreements to include minorities in
specific projects, such as building the Edwards Jones Dome and expanding
Interstate 64.
And there have been protests demanding greater minority
representation, such as the 1999 shutdown of I-70, where Reverend Al Sharpton
led minority contractors in a call for more state highway jobs.
But according to Moye, the projects and protests have
failed to bring significant numbers of African Americans into St. Louis
construction unions – often called the building trades.
“We have seen some cooperation at certain projects at
different times between contractors and the building trades, but in the end
when you look at the numbers, they are low,” Moye explained.
A disparity study commissioned by the Metropolitan
St. Louis Sewer District in 2011 supports Moye’s statement. It shows that
construction workers in St. Louis and St. Louis County are disproportionately
white and overwhelmingly male.
Because Moye has seen so many initiatives try and fail to
increase diversity in the past, he is hesitant to believe the hype surrounding
the newest such initiative, the BUD program.
“Anything that the BUD program would do to increase
minorities and women in the trades, we’ll support it wholeheartedly,” Moye
said. “But there’s been all kinds of efforts in the past, there’s been all
kinds of initiatives to increase African Americans in the trades over the last
50 years, and it just hasn’t happened.”
BUD stands for Building Union Diversity, and it is an
eight-week pre-apprenticeship program taught by instructors from seven St.
Louis unions. The inaugural class is currently underway.
Pre-apprenticeship programs have been in St. Louis for
years, but participants have struggled to get accepted into the union’s
apprenticeship programs.
But BUD will be different, said Jeff Aboussie of the
Building and Construction Trades Council of St. Louis.
“Not to downplay any of the past pre-apprentice programs,
but they’re not people from our industry, and they’re going to have to come to
us eventually anyway if they’re going to get indentured into any of our
apprenticeship programs,” Aboussie said. He added that because the union
instructors are part of the industry, they know what skills and knowledge
pre-apprentices need to be accepted by the unions.
To help match participants with the construction trade
they are best suited for, the unions are each taking one week to introduce
pre-apprentices to their trade. By the time BUD is over, they will have a basic
understanding of what it takes to be a brick layer, a carpenter, an electrical
worker, an iron worker, a laborer, an operating engineer and a plumber.
Aboussie admitted that unions have done a poor job
recruiting minorities in the past, but said they have committed to improving
their outreach.
“We know we have to do better,” Aboussie said. “And we
need to make these jobs that are going on in these neighborhoods look like the
people who live in these neighborhoods.”
If they make it through the program, BUD participants
will be invited to interview for acceptance into one of the union’s
apprenticeship programs. The unions plan to hold four sessions of BUD within
the next year, for a total of 60 participants.
But with the small participant size and no guarantee of
employment, MOKAN Executive Director Yaphett El-Amin is skeptical of the
ability of BUD to truly diversify the unions.
“If the BUD program is structured … to be a pipeline to
employment, then kudos to the BUD program,” El-Amin said. “But we are not going
to wait and sit idly by hoping that it works – and hoping that people who have
traditionally not done the best job of being inclusive are being inclusive.”
Plans are in the works for MOKAN to open its own,
non-union, apprenticeship program in January. As an organization that supports
minority and women-owned contractors, MOKAN has a pool of potential employers
for their future apprentices. But MOKAN apprentices may not be able to find
employment with the two biggest construction projects of the decade.
Major projects underway for the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District and BJC HealthCare have helped drive the creation of
the MOKAN and BUD programs because they are increasing the number of
construction jobs available. But executives with BJC and MSD say their
companies usually hire union contractors.
“Health care work is a highly specialized type of
construction,” explained BJC HealthCare Group President Bob Cannon. “And so
what we’ve learned is that the unions have done a very good job over time
preparing their workforce.”
MSD Executive Director Brian Hoelscher echoed Cannon,
saying that MSD trusts union training and that "well over 99 percent"
of their work gets done by union contractors, "although on occasion we do
have non-union workers,” Hoelscher said.
But despite that potential setback for MOKAN, there are
some positive signs that African Americans and women may soon begin to make
greater inroads into the St. Louis construction industry.
Both BJC and MSD have committed to diversifying their
construction workforce – BJC by appointing a diversity consultant and posting a
dashboard of their minority work hours, and MSD
by signing a Community Benefit Agreement to make 30 percent of
their construction workforce minorities. MOKAN and CBTU are both signatories on
the agreement.
The City of St. Louis and St. Louis County also have
minority hiring requirements for public projects now. St. Louis has had
requirements in place since 2009, but the effects weren’t fully felt right away
due to a recession-related construction slowdown. In 2012, the city’s requirements expanded to include projects
funded with TIF (Tax Increment Financing). This past June, County Executive
Charlie Dooley signed an executive order establishing diversity goals for
St. Louis County. However, methods of enforcing the order are unclear.
For more information, visit www.stlouisbuildingconstructiontrades.org or call
314-647-0628.
Source: The
St. Louis American
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