Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Preferential Treatment
My Liberal thinking friend Linda McDonald wrote an opinion in the Patriot Ledger a short time ago regarding minority and woman owned businesses. Although the specifics of her editorial were more about the unfairness of adding disabled veterans to the list of disadvantaged businesses, I commented in disagreement with the entire premise of giving an advantage to “certain” businesses. In my mind giving an advantage to some over others is itself, discrimination. Preferential treatment, when not based on qualifications is wrong. As far as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ “documented” history of discrimination against minority and woman owned businesses, I would be very interested to see it.
To start with, the public bid laws are set up in a manner that makes it difficult to discriminate. Simply put, low bidder gets the job. Prior to starting any construction work, a company must show they are qualified to do the work they specifically bid on. This means they must have a track record going back several years showing that they have successfully completed a certain type of construction work. This prevents unqualified contractors from doing shabby, unprofessional work, completing the project on time, and treating their workers and the community properly by providing a safe workplace, fair wages and sufficient insurance coverage. Another part of the bid law is that qualified contractors must show they hire and train workers without bias, in other words, hire minorities and women, as long as they are able to do the work. All construction businesses that comply with these criteria can compete for any construction project.
From a personal standpoint I have competed against many minority and woman owned construction businesses with and without success. Some of these companies are equally as qualified as I am to complete the work. In those cases, I often lose the job, despite having a lower bid, because the other contractor is allowed to adjust their price lower (a form of fraud) and the deciding authority has the incentive to allow this because of the law. I rationalize this by understanding that sometimes I may also lose work this way because the deciding authority simply prefers another contractor over me.
There have been situations however that become difficult to excuse because it is out and out cheating. When a public bid is trade specific, such as roofing work, it becomes difficult for a contractor to subcontract a percentage, as stipulated by law, of the work. When you do all the work yourself, how do you subcontract a portion of it? This is done by buying the materials through a minority supplier. In the Boston area, most contractors buy their material through a minority owned business that does not have any supplies. They simply write that company a check with the percentage added in order to comply with the quota. It provided a source of income for a handful of individuals whose only qualification was that they were a minority.
I have also seen company owners place their businesses in their wife’s name and even formed separate companies in their wife’s name just to qualify as a woman owned business. These are the same companies; no more women or minorities were put to work, it simply got the company more work and gave them an advantage over others.
There is also the question of the hiring practices of these companies. Does a woman owned business hire only women? If a majority of the qualified tradesman available are white males, then how does this law change that? So how does a minority owned company help minorities overall? These questions are not answered by the minority business quotas.
Lastly, in our hometown of Weymouth, there is an ordinance called the “Responsible Employer Ordinance”. I am against this law because I feel it gives an unfair advantage to union companies. In the same manner, the Massachusetts bid laws are set up to prevent discriminatory behavior in construction bidding and this ordinance as well as minority and woman owned business quotas allow preference to be given to a certain segment of the population in spite of qualifications, race or gender.
POSTED BY STAN on December 29, 2009
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Comments
I agree with you that we shouldn't need preferences if the laws regarding bidding on public construction are followed but as we have seen by the REO, politics often intrudes on the process. The REO is written to give union trades an edge over non-union. Union trades often bring suit against non-union companies that win in the bidding war. This is currently happening in Hanover and recently happened in Braintree and Quincy. REOs have become prevalent because of the amount of new school building that has gone on over the last decades. There would be no need for REOs, project labor agreements or any of these preferential practices if we abolished the outdated prevailing wage law. The reason women and minorities want in to this predominately white male monopoly is because of the prevailing wage which guarantees middle class wages regardless of the actual skill needed to complete the job. Many building trades jobs have become deskilled (people install the same windows, use the same type of wallpaper, now will build a prototype school) over the years in response to a desire to keep costs down. I initially became interested in this when our newly formed council passed the REO as one of their first orders of business. I was incensed that we would have an ordinance that mandated that private contractors pay their employees higher wages, the full cost of their health insurance and guarantee them a defined pension. All of this (except the pension) would mean that this predominately male work force would be better paid than the teachers working in the building they were remodeling (Academy Ave.) When I asked Joe Connolly how he justified this, he said "these guys have families." So the basis for a prevailing wage, REO and now adding veterans to the affirmative action law has nothing to do with skill and protecting the public and everything to do with maintaining the male breadwinner mythology. (Why do we pay a police officer $42/hr to direct traffic around construction workers and a crossing guard $13/hr to cross children?) And, of course, there is discrimination in this field against women and minorities. This discrimination occurs similiarily to any other discrimination-from exclusion. Most women do not frequent bars or mens clubs (like the Elks, VFW etc.) where the connections and greasing occurs. Most politicians are white men who need the support of their peers to stay in office-most politicians (even Martha Coakley!) know that having blue collar unions against you is political suicide. (Didn't you tell me this?)
Now-I also agree that women are complicit in this discrimination. Many women were brought up thinking that they were going to marry "well" and be supported so did not train or seek aneducation in a good paying field. These women tend to support unequal pay because they will never make a wage that could support their family (as well as their husband) by working in a female dominated pink or blue collar job. Also, by partnering with a man, women and minority own companies get some degree of confidence and work from association. The veterans affirmative action clause will be similarily and fraudently misused.
Sorry to ramble Stan, but I come at this from a feminist point of view. Great debating with you!
Posted by: Linda M. MacDonald | January 3, 2010 02:20 PM