Nutter, Council moves aim at trades diversity

Mayor Nutter will name a 30-member commission to assess ways to increase diversity in the construction industry as part of a plan to get the Convention Center expansion moving, according to sources familiar with discussions under way.

If things go as planned, City Council could vote Thursday to get the Convention Center moving and set in motion plans to alter permanently the racial, gender and ethnic character of the region's construction sites.

"One of [the commission's] charges is going to be to do a demographic study to see what the workforce looks like, and also to ascertain what the unions look like, and then we can build from there," building trades' business manager Pat Gillespie said yesterday.

Gillespie has been meeting with Council members and others to figure out how to meet terms imposed by Council last month after a heated dispute over diversity in the construction unions.

Council passed an ordinance effectively requiring construction unions to disclose the demographics of their membership and commit to long-term diversity plans before the Convention Center construction can get under way.

According to the ordinance, Council would have to approve the union-diversity plans in a resolution.

Council's vote would be on provisional diversity plans that would be subject to modification following the work of the mayoral commission.

At least one Council member, Wilson Goode Jr., believes the plan is a way of evading or watering down the requirements in the diversity ordinance.

"This is an attempt to reverse what was done in ensuring economic opportunity in the ordinance passed by Council in December, and to provide cover for the building and construction trades not submitting diversity plans to the Council," Goode said yesterday.

"It is what it is," Goode said, "and anybody who says it's not is a liar."

The 30-member commission, called the Mayor's Advisory Commission on Construction Industry Diversity, would be established by an executive order.

It would take until September to report on the availability of minority and women contactors and potential apprentices, then craft a plan with achievable targets for more inclusion.

It's not clear at this point how unions would meet Council's requirement that they disclose the composition of their membership.

One source involved in the discussions said the unions would provide that information to Council before Thursday's vote.

Gillespie said he thought the mayor's commission would decide how membership information is disclosed.

"How the information will be disseminated, or even if it will in certain instances be disseminated, will be determined [by the commission]," Gillespie said.

The commission would include union leaders and elected officials, as well as other players in the construction industry. Its goal would be to increase diversity on all future construction work, public and private. *