Council considers bill to achieve workforce diversity

As Mayor Kenney looks to spend millions on rehabbing Philadelphia libraries, parks, and recreation centers, City Council on Tuesday looked to ensure the workforce on those projects, and other city jobs, is diverse.

Under legislation approved by a Council committee, the office that tracks workers' wages would also track diversity on job sites. Contractors who don't comply by trying to reach diversity goals could be barred from future city work.

But compliance is not cut and dried. And the bill was approved despite confusion from Council members and the enforcing office about how much legal muscle the city has.

"I need to know what's enforceable, what's not enforceable," said Perritti DiVirgilio, director of the city's office of labor standards. "How much jurisdiction I have. It just needs to be cleared up."

The legislation, introduced by Council President Darrell L. Clarke, would allow the city to fine contractors who do not make "good-faith efforts" to hire minorities, women, and those with disabilities.

Companies are already required to set goals for diversity hiring, but the city has no recourse if little is done to meet the benchmarks. Under the proposed legislation, if contractors did not make adequate attempts to hire a diverse workforce, they could be banned from city work for up to three years.

DiVirgilio said the proposed rules were less clear than the ones used when his office checks whether contractors are paying prevailing wages.

"A carpenter makes $30 an hour. So that person, when that certified payroll comes in, has to be getting paid $30 an hour," he said. "These are [just] goals."

DiVirgilio said he would look to the department in charge of the project, for example the Water or Parks Department, to shut down a site if a contractor was not making an effort to hire minority workers.

That was insufficient for Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.

"So do we have to rely on other departments heads, some of whom don't even agree with us philosophically on this issue, to have the authority to do something?" she said. "Really?"

Questions were also raised Tuesday about whether DiVirgilio's six-person staff can handle the new tasks. Beverly Harper, a member of the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Construction Industry Diversity, recommended that the city start smaller, with construction sites for select city departments.

"There should be a strategy and plan required for how to approach this effort," she said.

DiVirgilio said his office would need new staff to carry out the new requirements. He said he believed extra funding for the effort in the forthcoming fiscal years budget was "being worked on."

The bill was approved by Council's Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. Councilman Curtis Jones Jr., the committee's chair, asked DiVirgilio and others involved in enforcing the legislation to seek answers to the questions raised Tuesday before the bill goes to the full Council for a vote.

Source: Philly.com