In a couple of months, the O’Fallon Park Recreation Complex – a $23 million community center near West Florissant Street and I-70 – will open its doors to North St. Louis City families.
In its construction, the project has thus far employed 33 percent minority workers – about 98 percent of whom were African-American.
Although many said it couldn’t be done, the project exceeded the city’s 25 percent minority workforce goal, said Zachary Hamilton, vice president of Kwame Building Group Inc., the project’s manager.
Similar doubtful voices are telling other public institutions, including the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD), that increasing the minority workforce goals is not possible. In December, MSD’s Board of Trustees voted against a policy that would have increased minority workforce requirements on contracts. The decision came after many construction companies and union leaders argued against the increase.
With the City of St. Louis having a 50 percent African-American population, the numbers are there, said Tony Thompson, Kwame founder and CEO.
“The people are there,” Thompson said. “Everyone is trying to find 20 reasons that it can’t be done, rather than rolling up their sleeves and trying to get it done.”
‘Pilot program’
The O’Fallon Park center is a model for success, said Richard Bradley, president of the Board of Public Service. The center was the “pilot” for the 2009 city ordinance (68412), which states that civic projects $1 million or more must have 25 percent minority labor hours.
The Board of Public Service will facilitate MSD’s upcoming $4.6 billion improvements over the next 20 years. However, Bradley declined to comment on MSD’s workforce participation goals.
“Being the pilot program for this ordinance, it took people a short time to get adjusted to it,” Bradley said. “Once you have established this and people know what to expect, they know what they need to do in the future.”
Hamilton said no one has to take his word for the workforce numbers. The labor hours were calculated through certified payroll, which tracks demographic information and hours for each worker. All workers were from Missouri.
However, when it’s all completed, the project will mostly likely fall short on a few fronts. Only 15 percent of workers were from the City of St. Louis, whereas the ordinance set a 20 percent local workforce goal. Women workers so far only account for four percent, shy of the five percent goal.
Short on apprentices
The project also failed to meet the city’s 15 percent apprentice participation goal – the project is currently at 12 percent. Hamilton said with the unemployment rate so high, it was a tough goal to meet.
“A lot of construction workers are unemployed, and apprentices have to find a job and then get a sponsor,” Hamilton said. “With so many journeyman unemployed, a few trades have closed down their apprentice programs completely.”
Missouri’s young adult unemployment rate of 32 percent is higher than the rate for African Americans statewide at 16 percent, according to Labor Bureau statistics. Policies causing youth unemployment (even unintentionally) lead to tougher roads for those youths who are most vulnerable, according to a study by the Employment Policies Institute.
“Those experiencing unemployment at an early age have years of lower earnings and an increased likelihood of unemployment ahead of them,” states the institute’s report titled “The long-term effects of youth unemployment.”
In the Hazelwood School District, young African Americans are being kept out of the job pool, the St. Louis NAACP claimed recently. The NAACP has urged the school board to change a policy that permits only hiring apprentices from certain federally-recommended apprenticeship programs. In this region, only three percent of participants in these programs are minorities, according to U.S. Labor statistics.
Nationwide, unemployment is higher among those with lower levels of education. And most apprentices don’t have a college education, said Thompson, an education advocate.
“Until our young people, particularly African Americans, begin to realize the importance of getting a decent education, they are going to be the highest unemployed,” Thompson said. “The best way is to help combat unemployment is to make sure they all get a good education.”
40 percent MBE
Aside from workforce, 40 percent of the project’s contractors and subcontractors were minorities, and eight percent were women, which exceeded the city’s goal of 25 percent minority-owned business enterprises (MBEs) and 5 percent women-owned business enterprises (WBEs). The compliance office at St. Louis-Lambert International Airport is monitoring these numbers.
For workforce, the St. Louis Agency for Training and Employment (SLATE) monitored the goals. Between the SLATE, Kwame and BPS offices, a number of resumes from minorities and women were collected, Hamilton said.
“With this job, we can say with confidence that there are people that are working that wouldn’t otherwise be working without the efforts of the team,” Hamilton said.
The goal wasn’t something that just happened, he said. The team tracked and monitored workforce participation throughout the entire process. Hamilton said the biggest lesson he comes away with is the need to start working towards participation goals early.
Another asset is having an owner who is serious about the goals.
“The mayor’s office, BPS, and the city from the very beginning took a strong position that this was not an aspiration – this was a goal we were going to meet,” said Joshua Randall, vice president of business development at Kwame.
“When you have this sort of leadership from the owner, it makes the process that much more smooth in design and construction.”
