Stadiums fall short of meeting goals for minority contracts

Originally published Tuesday, April 22, 2003

In exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in city money, the stadiums rising in South Philadelphia were supposed to spread the wealth beyond the usual white guys.

Minorities would get 45 percent of the construction work on the $1.1 billion project, the Eagles and the Phillies agreed. That commitment - a goal, not a promise - was crucial to obtaining City Council approval for the project.

But the number of hours worked by minorities is turning out to be about 28.5 percent, according to the teams.

That is not insignificant in an industry that has long been accused of excluding blacks. But critics say missing the goal is unacceptable in a city that is 55 percent black, Latino and Asian, and where nearly one-quarter of its residents are struggling to rise out of poverty.

Those critics do not blame the teams. They blame the trade unions that have a lock on major construction in Philadelphia.

“This becomes an issue of simple economic survival for the city and region,” said A. Bruce Crawley, chairman of the African American Chamber of Commerce and head of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Ernest E. Jones, executive director of the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corp. said the problem is that, by his estimate, only about 10 percent of the skilled union tradespeople are African American.

“If the unions were to hire every single African American and Latin American, they would never meet the [stadium] goals. The goals are unrealizable,” said Jones, who chairs the Phillies’ hiring oversight committee.

The trades have long declined to reveal their racial makeup. Patrick Gillespie, business manager of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, which represents about 40,000 union construction workers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, declined to discuss the minority-hiring shortfall in detail.

Gillespie said he had believed minority employment on the stadium projects was nearly 39 percent and could not explain the lower number until he had time to analyze the data.

He suggested that individual contractors might be partly to blame for not more aggressively seeking minorities.

Gillespie disputed Jones’ 10 percent figure for the overall union workforce.

“A number [of unions] . . . have a substantial amount of African Americans,” he said, but he did not provide specifics.

Expanding the total trade workforce for the sole purpose of increasing racial diversity would risk depressing wages, Gillespie said, because an oversupply of trained workers could work for nonunion companies.

“You don’t want people with skills unemployed, because then that helps weaken the negotiating position with an employer. . . . You have to try and control the size of the workforce,” Gillespie said.

He conceded that this can look like discrimination “when people who have been fighting to get included into these circles say that they are just excluding me because of race.”

“That’s not why,” he said.

A comparison of minority employment at the stadiums with the last major project in Philadelphia that depended on city tax money - the Convention Center, completed in 1992 - shows that the total hours worked for minorities was the same as it is now.

Philadelphia activists have their own explanation for why minorities do not get more jobs in the building trades.

“They want to hire people they already have a relation with,” said Jihad Ali, who once ran a small, black union-contracting company and is now active in the Contractors Round Table, a group of black contractors organized by the African American Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s an old-boy network. . . . Their intent is to help their friends,” Ali said.

Ali called the city’s efforts ineffectual.

“We are supposed to have someone looking out for us, who says, ‘We understand you have this old network, but how about the disadvantaged guys who have always been excluded?’ "

Philadelphia does have a program to encourage minority businesses to get ordinary city contracts, but officials this spring conceded it has been inadequate.

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Of the $1.1 billion stadium project, $394 million is coming from city taxpayers; $170 million is coming from the state; and the remainder is being raised by the teams.

The $700 million in direct construction money is subject to two goals: that 45 percent of the hours worked would be by minorities and that at least 35 percent of the supply and construction contracts would go to minority-controlled firms.

The teams are generally meeting or exceeding that second goal.

At the Eagles stadium, about 45 percent of the dollar value of the money spent on construction or supply contracts has gone to minority firms or joint ventures between minority and white companies. To count as an acceptable joint venture, a partnership must have at least 51 percent minority control.

The Phillies are at 32 percent of the total construction dollar value but still have 35 percent of their contracts to award.

But most of the public attention has focused on the jobs issue.

The 29 percent figure for hours worked by minorities includes both laborers and the skilled, better-paying trades such as carpenters or electricians. If only skilled trades are counted, the minority figure drops to 21.5 percent.

The numbers are similar at the Phillies field, which is to open in 2004.

Michael Stiles, the Phillies’ vice president of operations and administration, declined to say whether he considered the labor goal realistic.

“If we complain about a percentage or a goal, I think it gives everyone the excuse to relax on it. . . . We promised to try as hard as we could to reach it, and I think that’s what we are doing,” Stiles said.

Stiles said some unions had blamed contractors, and some contractors had blamed unions, for not meeting the goals.

Richard West, project manager for Eagles general contractor Turner Keating McKissack, said: “I don’t see how the project could have done any better. We are basically hiring what is available to us to hire from the union halls.

“If they don’t have the . . . minorities there, they can’t come work here.”

Indeed, the 45 percent hiring agreement was an “arbitrary” figure selected in the heat of Council debate, said W. Wilson Goode Jr., an at-large councilman who sits on the Eagles oversight committee.

Goode, displeased with the results, said he had hoped the minority-owned businesses on the project would push up the number of minority workers. But that didn’t happen.

“They are taking what they are sent from the union halls,” Goode said.

George Burrell, Mayor Street’s top political aide, said the administration had wanted a “fair target” to push the number of minority workers as high as possible.

Burrell said the teams had made a good-faith effort to meet the goal.

“It’s pretty common knowledge there are not an overall large number of minorities in the trades,” Burrell said. “I don’t even think the leaders of the trades would take issue.”

The jobs controversy has put Street in a tough spot. He is up for reelection and counting on union support, yet a major critic of trade-union hiring, Crawley, is Street’s longtime friend.

Barbara Grant, a spokeswoman for Street, said the mayor was “not happy” that the results had fallen short. He plans to issue a “fairly strong” executive order to beef up minority-participation rules on ordinary city construction contracts, Grant said.

Street raised the issue with union leaders but has not made specific proposals, Burrell said.

Contact staff writer Nathan Gorenstein at 215-854-5983 or ngorenstein@phillynews.com.