Monday, July 18, 2005

They are better at "diversity" than they are building roads

Oregon Dept Of Transportion Kicks Off Workforce Development Initiative
PORTLAND, Oregon - A statewide workforce development initiative designed to boost diversity in employment, increase apprenticeship participation, and increase training resources and opportunities for highway construction jobs debuts in Portland next week.

Representatives from these groups will attend Tuesday's meeting. Speakers include Warner, Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner, ODOT Highway Division Executive Officer John Jackley, ODOT Diversity Manager Michael Cobb, and ODOT Region 1 Manager Matthew Garrett.

The Workforce Development Plan has three critical elements: (my emphasis)
* Increasing apprenticeship targets from the current 5 percent to 20 percent during the next 18 months.
* Boosting participation in transportation construction projects in the Portland tri-county area to 14 percent employment for women and 20 percent for minority workers.
* Taking steps to ensure that a qualified and diverse labor pool is ready to meet contractor needs for federally and state-funded transportation projects.

Apparently fixing cracked bridges is not as critical as increasing employment based on skin color.

So we have various ODOT managers meeting at the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepeneurs to discuss the racist plan. No word on whether Dr. King will be hired by ODOT based on his skin color rather than the content of his character.

And for those of you who are wondering why Michael Cobb has a job it's very simple, without a Diversity Manager who would supervise the "Civil Rights Liason"? I know, I know, the HR person handles all that nonsense at my work too.

But a look at the tapestry that is ODOT's management flow chart reveals all... LINK

Various jobs such as "Proccess Improvement Manager" and Bussiness Performance Analyst" could probably be eliminated since, based on roads not built and bridges not fixed, the proccess is not "improving" and neither is "performance."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having been a board member with a government agency, during the course of a major construction project, I saw how the quality control standards that were set out in the bid docs were later lowered to meet whatever the minority contractor had delivered.

Later, other contracts were let to repair or replace the sub-standard work products and that was required in most circumstances.

But not to worry, the Feds were paying 80% of the tab and loaning the local government the other 20% but only if there wern't any waves.

Daniel said...

It would be great if some of those documents, dated of course, could find the light of day...

But not to worry...

It doesn't matter if they call it federal money, state money, lottery money, local money, etc. The bottom line is that the citizens are footing the bill.