Racism in a highly-diverse region of the country is apparently running rampant. Bosses at a New York City union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, founded in 1892, are refusing a government order to diversify their ranks, and presented a proposed hiring list of 37 people for temporary positions, with 34 white candidates, no Hispanics, and once sole black person who told the commission he didn’t even want the job.
The New York Times reports:
What part of diversity don’t you understand?
That essentially was the question that visibly irritated members of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor asked at a hearing in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning. They wanted to know why the shipping companies that operate in the ports of New York and New Jersey could not find a single black, Hispanic or Asian person who could fill a stevedore’s job.
Troubled by a work force that remains predominantly white, the commission, a bistate agency that oversees the dockworkers, pressed the New York Shipping Association to produce a diverse pool of candidates for temporary jobs. The shippers deferred to the International Longshoremen’s Association, the union that has maintained an iron grip on the ports for decades, and the union came up with 37 candidates.
All but four were white men. None were Hispanic. Only one was black, and, according to the commissioners, he did not really want a job.
New York City boast over eight million residents, 36% of whom were not even born in America. 25% of the city’s residents are black, 27% are Hispanic, and 45% are white. NYC also has both the largest populations of Jewish people outside of Israel and the largest population of Puerto Rican people outside of the island of Puerto Rico.
Wikipedia notes “The ten nations constituting the largest sources of modern immigration to New York City are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, and Russia.”
Gothamist adds:
The Commission, however, contends that the 246 potential employees found through the work-force centers were actually better qualified for the jobs than those the union nominated!
As for the union’s candidates, about a third failed to pass physical exams, and several were disqualified because they had ties to organized crime. “I’ll admit that we didn’t do as good a job of screening as we should have,” said Joseph Curto, president of the New York Shipping Association. Hey, whaddaya gonna do? The Commission, which is empowered by both states’ legislatures, was created by President Eisenhower to loosen the mob’s grip on the Port of New York and New Jersey. In 2009, the Commission was rocked by scandal when Inspector General Joseph Fisch found “a total agency breakdown” and made numerous allegations of corruption.