More than 80 representatives from the Greater Hartford minority business community hit Main Street Hartford on Wednesday to protest the hiring and contracting practices of The Metropolitan District, which is performing nearly $2 billion in water and sewer work in the region.
The Minority Construction Council is asking MDC to set jobs aside for residents of Bloomfield, East Hartford, Hartford, Newington, Rocky Hill, West Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor.
While the MDC is researching such an initiative, it is hard to pull off because the organization uses federal money, which says users can’t restrict who works on their jobs, said Andrew Crumbie, MDC assistant district counsel.
The afternoon protest on Wednesday also demanded MDC have a disparity consultant release the finding of a study into the disparity in MDC’s hiring and contracting; and the recommendations from the study be implemented.
Crumbie said MDC has released its disparity study, which had mixed results on how different races were represented in hiring and contracting.
The district is looking into hiring programs that target minorities, but first MDC has to prove non-race-based programs aren’t working in hiring equal numbers, Crumbie said. Proving that takes 3-5 years of data, and MDC just launched the initiative in September.
The minority contractors also want MDC to report its spending to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities; and have MDC board members be elected directly by the public, as opposed to being appointed by government officials.
“With $2 billion in public money, there needs to be some idea of how it is being spent,” said Rufus Wells, executive director for the Minority Construction Council.
The protest – which includes business owners and those looking for work – was spurred by the August jobs report showing unemployment is much higher in minority communities between 14-16 percent for blacks and Hispanics compared to the overall rate of 9.1 percent.
