This week’s historic torrential rains emphasize the need for improvements to the region’s sewer system.
The Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) is already underway in its $4.7 billion in sewer upgrades in St. Louis city and St. Louis County. From July 1, 2012 to Nov. 30, 2015, MSD awarded $755 million in contracts for the work, according to the district. MSD is a standalone government agency authorized under the state constitution, whose board is appointed by the mayor and county executive.
Throughout the year, community leaders have been trying to understand how many minorities, women and apprentices are being employed on these jobs.
These leaders have been butting heads with MSD administrators on a number of things – including whether or not the $300,000 that the district spends on training and recruiting minorities annually is actually helping to diversify MSD’s workforce. These programs also specifically focus on low-income and underemployed individuals.
On Dec. 21, MSD’s board trustees stepped in to serve as mediators, in a meeting where the MSD team and community leaders deliberated the impact of the district’s diversity programs.
The two sides currently differ on one basic point – how to calculate the number of minorities working the jobs.
According to their calculations, MSD administrators told the trustees that they are only nine minority workers short of achieving their goals on minority workforce, which is 30 percent. To arrive at this number, they looked at the number of total workforce hours and divided that by full-time equivalent hours.
Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis city NAACP, told the St. Louis American that calculating the number on the workers in this way is misleading. He said that assumes that these people are working five days a week, eight hours a day – which is not typical on job sites.
“It was simply a way to make it look as if there are not a bunch of jobs that are being neglected,” he said.
At the meeting, the community leaders suggested to the trustees that they establish an agreed upon standard for calculating minority workforce.
The community leaders also wanted to see how many jobs minorities have received on MSD projects since the interim workforce goals were established in March 2012.
The workforce numbers that MSD recently presented at a Dec. 14 meeting represent the 2015 fiscal year. MSD spokesman Lance LeComb said that the district didn’t have the resources to track its workforce on the rest of the $755 million, because prior to 2012, the district didn’t have minority workforce goals. LeComb said the community leaders knew that.
“Everyone was okay with that and agreed the focus should be on addressing the results of the disparity study and then bringing on resources to address any disparity study outcomes,” he said.
Pruitt said the district has had three years to figure out how to track its workforce. But aside from this, he said under federal Executive Order 11246, the district is required to track its workforce on any projects that used federal dollars.
“They’ve always had to do this,” he said.
According to MSD, the district never tracked workforce goals on projects that were federally funded prior to 2012, and it was not required. However, Pruitt said that, “They probably tried to put the task on contractors, and no one challenged it.”
Proactive hiring
Community leaders said the district has not been effectively using the tools meant for hiring minorities, which were outlined in the Community Benefits Agreement and the 2013 disparity study.
On October 10, 2013 MSD’s Board of Trustees approved the Community Benefits Agreement, which required MSD to adopt minority workforce goals and to put about $300,000 annually into construction training programs and minority recruitment. MSD executive director Brian Hoelscher signed the agreement with community leaders on December 4, 2013.
As part of that, MSD awarded $150,000 annual contract with the St. Louis Agency for Training and Employment (SLATE) to provide a list of qualified minority and women workers that contractors could employ. So far, contractors have not hired any workers off of SLATE’s First Source Hiring list.
At the Dec. 21 meeting, Yaphett El-Amin, executive director of MOKAN, criticized MSD for not making the best use of the list and wasting taxpayers’ dollars. Hoelscher said that in August, MSD started requiring contractors who were not meeting their workforce goals to show proof that they went to SLATE, the unions and the BUD construction training program to find minority and women workers.
However, Pruitt said that is not the proactive approach that the disparity study – completed in spring 2013 – lays out. And as the Community Benefit Agreement states, the disparity study “shall be attached and incorporated” into overall agreement, he said.
The study states that prior to hiring on any job, contractors should notify SLATE’s First Source Referral system and list the job opportunity. And for a 10-day period, the contractors should only consider an interview applicant from the First Source list.
The applicant is not required to pay any fee. And if the contractors didn’t follow this process, MSD could terminate their pre-qualification status.
Pruitt said it’s unacceptable that zero people were fired from the First Source list.
“If you used this process, why would this happen?” he said. “Why would you need a waiver? If they stick to what was called out for, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
Not one dollar
El-Amin also expressed concern that contractors are not required to hire apprentices. El-Amin said that BJC Healthcare required their contractors to award a certain percentage of the work to apprentices. She suggested that MSD hire one apprentice for every $300,000 in contract dollars.
MSD also contributes $150,000 annually to the BUD construction training program, which is in partnership with SLATE. For this past training session, MSD sponsored 16 people in the BUD program and 13 have found jobs – but none at MSD.
MSD administrators said they didn’t think they were required to employ the people they sponsor in the BUD program, and they can’t force those people to work for them. But community leaders said that the legally-binding agreement specifically states “for employment in the MSD Capital Improvement and Replacement Program (CIPR).” They recommended taking a deeper look into the way MSD recruits from the BUD program.
By the end of June 30, 2016, the district anticipates awarding $889.6 million in contracts for the sewer improvements.
More than anything, Pruitt said the community leaders want to know how many dollars – on either workforce or contracting – those minorities have lost since the disparity study’s recommendations were supposed to be fully implemented in August 2013.
“Our position is that we need to make up those dollars on the back end,” he said. “We are not prepared to give up one dollar or one job.”
