Schenectady official plans crackdown on minority hiring compliance

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Despite strict hiring guidelines for construction companies doing business in Schenectady, some contractors manipulate the system to avoid hiring women and minorities, Affirmative Action Director Miriam Cajuste says.

These companies have routinely offered to hire minority subcontractors only for extremely specific jobs that few know how to do, so they could claim that there were no qualified minorities available, Cajuste said.

Until now, the city has believed them, issuing waivers of the affirmative action rules. But no more: The new affirmative action director is threatening to blacklist companies if they continue to deliberately draw up contracts to exclude minorities.

“I’ll go to the mayor and say, ‘This company has a history of not meeting their minority participation goal,’ ” Cajuste said. “Be aware: History may repeat itself.”

Under the city’s affirmative action rules, if a contractor submits a $100,000 bid for a taxpayer-funded project, $15,000 must go to women and minorities, generally self-employed workers who specialize in hauling, plumbing or electrical work.

The City Council could choose to exclude low bidders if they have a history of not complying with affirmative action, which requires firms to subcontract 15 percent of any taxpayer-funded job to minorities.

The rules were created to help those who traditionally can’t break into the white-dominated construction business.

But one of the city’s most successful bidders is arguing that the rules will now have the reverse effect, penalizing workers for being white. The only way for him to fulfill the rules, he said, would be to take some of his own workers, who are white, off the job.

“I can’t put my guys on an unemployment line and hire some guy. I’m breaking my back trying to get jobs for the company. What am I supposed to do? I’m supposed to get this job and give it to them?” said Carver Construction Co. project manager Walter Harbacz.

His company receives many multimillion-dollar city contracts and usually gets affirmative action waivers on the argument that no minorities can do the job. His crews then do all the work, without hiring subcontractors.

Complaint made

The matter came under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after one experienced minority contractor reported that Carver — and other companies — refused to hire him. Carver then claimed that there were no minorities to hire.

“I put bids in and got no response,” minority hauler Raishon Artis said. “A few years ago, I contacted them directly. Didn’t hear from them. Last year, I was beating the bushes. It’s just a disappointment.”

Things changed this year when a major state contractor won the city’s paving contract. Callanan Industries looked at the city’s affirmative action requirement and the list of available Schenectady subcontractors and solicited enough minorities to meet the 15 percent rule.

Artis was one of the contractors who got a job. He was struck by the difference in attitude.

“Some companies, they do whatever they have to do to meet participation,” he said. “When Callanan has the street paving, they have minorities. And the important thing is, they use city minorities.”

He doesn’t blame racism for Carver’s rejection. He thinks the motivation is plain old greed.

“The contractor would rather keep the money for themselves,” he said.

Harbacz agreed that money is a central issue. He said he doesn’t want to hire subcontractors because it would cost him less to do the job with his own workers. But in the bid documents, each contractors promises to share the work with minority subcontractors. In exchange, the contractors are allowed to decide which portions of the job will be shared.

That’s where companies can arrange to avoid hiring minorities.

“It is up to the contractor to look at the job and decide which section they will sub out,” Affirmative Action Director Cajuste said. “Oftentimes the attitude is to sub out the section of the job where they know there is no minority participation.”

Tailored search

Carver Construction got a waiver for its last city sewer project when it said it could find no qualified minorities able to work more than 18 feet underground on large pipes. It chose not to consider subcontracts for any other work, including the more common jobs of digging and hauling.

Harbacz said he knew there would be no qualified minorities for the underground work. But he said he genuinely searched for workers on the state’s list of minority contractors and noted that he once hired woman-owned businesses to do concrete and electrical work on a Metroplex Development Authority parking lot.

“I’ve looked on the New York Web site, which covers the whole state — there’s nothing for the specific work we do,” he said. “The affirmative action people wanted me to hire this guy because he had ‘plumbing experience.’ A 48-inch pipe, 18 feet deep, is a kind of specific job. His experience was as a janitor fixing leaky pipes occasionally at the McDonald’s he worked at.”

Even if he’d found someone qualified, he admitted he’d prefer his own crew.

“Our crews pretty much read each other’s minds,” he said.

Cajuste dismissed his arguments as excuses. Companies will no longer find it easy to get waivers from the affirmative action requirements now that she’s in charge, she said.

“I will tell them, ‘Go back to the drawing board and start again,’ ” she said. “The scope of the job involves more than one, two or three subsections. My take is, you know that trucking is going to be part of the job. You know there’s minority participation in trucking … .”

She is also telling companies that a good faith effort to hire minorities includes offering jobs in fields where minorities are available.

But Harbacz said he shouldn’t have to subcontract anything.

“We have our own paving crew, too. I can give them [minorities] the work, but then what am I supposed to do? We have 30 dump trucks.”

Cajuste has heard that many times.

“I have heard that excuse. Yes, you have your own trucks, but the effort is to get minority participation,” she said. “In the bid documents, you agree that a certain number of dollars will go to minority contractors. That is the promise.”

Working list

She has a list of minority contractors, which can be searched electronically. It lists experience, contact information, the insurance and certificates held by the worker and even the type of tools and equipment the worker owns. There are only a few on Schenectady’s list — three capable of general construction work, one construction plumber and two truckers. They all run their own businesses but generally employ fewer than three people. The list is, they admit, quite short. However, contractors can also hire from the state lists, which are much more extensive.

Companies can’t be forced to subcontract the jobs that could be filled from those lists. But Cajuste has the authority to shut down any project if she feels that the contractor is not complying with the rules.

She said she would not take such a drastic step.

“Take a sewer project. It’s not beneficial to the residents of the city if that project doesn’t get completed before winter,” she said. “Paving, water, sewer — disrupting a project is not in anyone’s interest, especially with our winters. Timing is everything.”

So instead, she will simply make sure that companies that don’t hire minorities don’t get city jobs. If they allow minorities only in the one subcontract that has no minority contractors, she said, she’ll tell Mayor Brian U. Stratton not to hire them again.

Some say that’s not enough. Lorena Miller, executive director of the Minority Contractors Technical Assistance Program, wants Cajuste to stop jobs and tell companies they won’t get paid until they hire minorities.

She said she’s frustrated beyond words by the situation.

“Once somebody has our contractor lists in their hands, what’s their excuse for not being in compliance?” she said. “That list has been circulated for years now. We have a full-scope list. They should have just as much access as anybody else.”