Recent reports of Mayor Jim Kenney’s goal to ensure 45
percent of workers on city-funded construction sites be minority can be viewed
one of two ways – with skepticism or hope.
In a radio interview earlier this week on WURD-900 AM
with Solomon Jones and written about in The Tribune, the mayor implied he
wouldn’t blame critics for choosing the former: “Look, people should be
skeptical, and people should say, ‘We’ve heard this before.’ ”
Indeed, we have.
For example, when former Mayor Michael Nutter came in, he
immediately appointed an 18-member diversity commission. It discovered that of
the $26.3 billion generated by local construction contractors, less than 1
percent of the gross receipts went to African-American and Hispanic businesses.
It said female-owned companies earned about 5 percent of the revenue.
Nutter’s commission made 31 recommendations to increase
the number of minority companies getting construction jobs, and made another 40
recommendations to increase the number of minority workers employed at
construction sites. It concluded the building trade unions should have a
membership goal of 32 percent minority and 7 percent female.
Yet here we are, still, trying to address stark
disparities in contract awards and opportunities for minorities.
Some progress has been made in awarding city contact
dollars. Between 1998 and 2003, then-City Councilman W. Wilson Goode told The
Philadelphia Daily News that only 2.3 percent of contracts went to
minority-owned businesses and 2.2 percent went to women. Nearly 96 percent of
city-contracted work was handled by companies owned by white men.
A study conducted by Econsult Solutions Inc. and Milligan
& Company LLC, found that in fiscal 2014, the city awarded $267 million in
contracts to minorities, reflecting about 29 percent participation.
But the construction trades have remained particularly
stubborn. Government statistics quoted in the Tribune story estimated those
trades are 99 percent male and 74 percent white.
“First, we need a baseline on where we are right now,”
Ryan Boyer, business manager for Laborers’ District Council of Philadelphia,
told The Tribune. While most of its members are African American, Hispanic or
Asian, they are also the lowest paid of the trades.
Boyer viewed Kenney’s goal favorably, telling The Tribune
the mayor was “dedicated to making substantial improvement there. Kenney has a
robust plan, and has been meeting behind closed doors to create a fair system.”
Boyer said the system would openly post apprenticeship
exams and follow-up with improvement tips to those who failed the tests. And a
new grading system would move away from a strict pass-or-fail system.
The glimmer of hope we might draw from Kenney’s
goal-setting partly lies in the handful of successes that have taken place with
minority participation in public projects. At the Convention Center, non-white
and female participation totaled 35 percent, when measured in hours worked.
A $46 million Water Department project, which involves
underground storage tanks for Venice Island in Manayunk, included 33 percent
minority and 5 percent female participation. A report said 48 percent of the
workers were Philadelphians.
So diversity in contracting is not a matter of can’t.
It’s a matter of won’t.
And Kenney’s close ties with labor leader John Dougherty
heighten our skepticism toward lofty promises in an industry that rarely
changes. Dougherty is the head of the Philadelphia Building and Construction
Trades Council and business manager for Local 98 of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which in recent years has contributed
mightily to campaigns throughout Pennsylvania, including the new mayor’s.
But to the doubters, Kenney said, “The only thing we can
do is produce, and I think that I am in a position now because of the support I
received and the coalitions I received with the building trades.”
Let’s hope this time will be the time that really makes a
difference.
Source: Philly
Tribune
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