The announcement on Tuesday of huge job slashes by Federated Department Stores, the Cincinnati-based retailer that acquired May Company last month, is another reminder of how tenuous the employment situation is during an era of mergers, acquisitions and an inexorable, highly competitive global economy.
The lay-off announcement was the largest this region has seen in recent years, and its negative impact will reverberate on an emerging Downtown as well as throughout the area.
Many major shifts in market forces have taken place in mature local industries, venerable mainstays in the St. Louis economy that employ large numbers of African Americans – the automobile industry, for example. Losses in the private sector have been compounded by the loss of many federal jobs in St. Louis.
However, there is something of an impending construction boom that should create increased direct employment in the local construction industry and produce positive ripples in indirect service-sector opportunities. There will be increased demand for employees in the trades as well as at the lower end of the job scale. It is the responsibility of employers and diversity watchdog agencies to ensure that this boom positively impacts a representative number of minority workers – and in particular African Americans, who have the potential to be the lifeblood of the local workforce.
Somewhat offsetting the bad news from Federated is the recent announcement that Express Scripts has decided to build its $50 million headquarters on the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The company is the St. Louis region’s second-largest publicly traded company. It will move 1,100 corporate jobs to the UM-St. Louis campus in North County in 2007 and will add 480 jobs at the new location during the next five years.
This carefully nurtured and highly welcome decision follows Pinnacle Entertainment’s announcement that it intends to spend upwards of $800 million to build casino and entertainment complexes downtown near the St. Louis Riverfront, as well as a sprawling development in Lemay in St. Louis County. While dubious in some ways, the gaming industry is labor-intensive, and there will be a large number of new jobs, many of them entry-level and permanent after the projects are completed.
Business leaders should make every effort to reach out to the black community as they invest in St. Louis. There must be carefully planned and diligently executed initiatives that allow African Americans to participate in these new and expanding ventures at all levels. At the same time, the African-American community must be proactive to capitalize on these opportunities by demanding its share in these ventures, most of which enjoy significant public subsidies or critical enabling public support.
The need is urgent on both sides – business (and its allies in government) must reach out to local blacks, and the community must eagerly and effectively grab every opportunity that emerges.