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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