Grading and Excavation Contractor’s parent company, Endeavor Business Media, has always embraced the concept and practice of equitable hiring. Diversity, equity, and inclusion practices have been gaining momentum among corporations and organizations for several years but sometimes these efforts fall short.
It has been recently reported by Daniel Kool and Lily Kepner for GBH News, Boston’s local NPR station, that the City of Boston is having difficulty. In an article titled, “Boston Struggles to Boost Minority, Female Labor Force In Construction” they report that four years after establishing equitable hiring goals for construction jobs, “none of the city’s top projects hit the standard for hiring women and less than a third met the standard for hiring people of color.”
The article on wgbh.org says, “Despite the new city standards meant to keep jobs local, residents have actually worked less on major projects, measured in the hours of labor. Local participation fell from 28% of hours in 2017 to 24% in 2020 — less than half the city’s 51% benchmark.
Priscilla Flint-Banks, who serves on the Boston Employment Commission that oversees the jobs policy, said adherence to the city’s hiring standards is ‘horrible.’
‘We want to make sure that our people have jobs — that women have jobs — that Boston residents have jobs, Black people, Latino people,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense that we would have a law like this on the book for our ordinance, and it’s not being enforced.’”
Kool and Kepner point out that leadership, prioritization, and enforcement of equitable hiring standards has been lacking. But another hurdle may be that there are simply not enough minority and female workers to fulfill Boston’s equity goals. Others dismiss that premise.
“Yeah, it takes a little more work, but they’re out there,” said John Cruz III, CEO of Cruz Construction. “To use that as an excuse is folly — it’s actually deception, and it’s racism.”
Cruz operates the third-generation, Black-owned business, which oversaw two out of the three major projects that hit the city’s metrics for residents: Roxbury’s Wayne at Schuyler and Dorchester’s Wayne at Bicknell, both income-restricted apartment building renovations. The company also met the city’s standard for people of color but, like every other top project, fell short on hiring women.
Cruz said the pressure to meet diverse hiring targets is often placed exclusively on the general contractor, but other players should be responsible for pursuing equity as well.
Please check out the entire article here.
And here’s to hoping the City of Boston keeps trying.
