Activists hit minority hiring on Red Line

After years of trudging to dull, cold, often roofless subway stations along the Red Line at Savin Hill, Fields Corner and Shawmut Avenue, commuters should in two years see brand new stations that bring their neighborhoods the same comfort that residents in most other neighborhoods with subway lines take for granted.

While commuters may benefit from the new stations, labor rights advocates say too few laborers of color and women laborers are benefitting in terms of construction jobs on the project.

Around 10 a.m. Monday morning, 12 white men could be seen working on the renovations to Fields Corner and Savin Hill stations, alongside just one black man, two white women and one black woman.

While a mostly white labor force is a common sight at construction sites in Boston, activists expect more diversity because the Red Line renovation is a state-funded project. While the state does not have specific requirements that contractors hire workers of color and women workers, a coalition of labor rights advocates is demanding that the state do more to push the contractor to hire more workers of color and women.

"[Prime contractor] Barletta Construction Division committed themselves to hire 30 percent minorities and 6.9 percent women," said Dorchester-Roxbury Labor Committee member Jean Alonso. "What they committed themselves to they did not do."

Activists say that 17.8 percent of the 66,915 work hours on the project were logged by people of color, while 2.4 percent were logged by women.

Pressure from the Dorchester-Roxbury Labor Committee and Women in the Building Trades led Barletta to set its percentage goals for the project. But monitoring their compliance proved a challenge.

"Women in the Building Trades gained the right to look at the sites and get figures from the T's diversity office," said Alonso. "But they had to actually pry those out of the diversity office."

Barletta Project Manager Tom Day referred all questions about his company's hiring to the MBTA.

A spokeswoman said the transit agency began over the last month to work on a plan with labor activists, unions and Barletta to increase the recruitment and mentoring of workers of color and women for the jobs on the Red Line. The work on the stations has been going on since May of last year, and is scheduled to be completed in 2007.

"Up to the present, we are very pleased with Barletta's efforts," said MBTA spokeswoman Lydia Rivera. "They have demonstrated good faith. They are reaching out to union halls, seeking minorities and women to employ when necessary."

But Barletta's efforts have not impressed labor rights activists.

"It is morally irresponsible," said Boston Branch NAACP President Leonard Alkins. "It is the same business as usual without unions reaching out to people of color to fill these positions. That has been pretty much the pattern throughout the Big Dig. There are many union card carriers and non-card carriers who could fill these positions. People of color can go to the union hall on a daily basis and say they are not working, yet they are passed over because people take care of their friends."

Article copyright The Bay State Banner.

Photograph (Leonard Alkins)