Employment opportunities should be equal opportunities for all people. Sometimes, the discrimination is so severe that the workplace may have one gender or have several communities take all the top positions. Minority hiring brings some sanity to such companies by making sure other groups and genders get a substantial portion of the posts or the vacancies. One method of ensuring minority hiring is practiced across the board is having representatives for these groups in the training institutions as well as boards that oversee recruitment of workers. They will put the board in check and help them avoid diverting from the policies involved in minority hiring. Unequal or biased representation draws a line to who can or cannot be employed. This is more so if the company or the contractor has alliances with various bodies or unions and only accepts what these unions can offer. Some claim that they want to maintain things as they are without upsetting the employment methods they have always used.

As one small contractor charged with the responsibility of scouting for potential employees found out, the rest of the workforce does not have any problem with assimilation of other people into the job market. Sherman Turner tells about his experience when he started out in the field of plumbing. Through his book, Minorities Deceived, he documents how he got into the trade and the experiences working as a small contractor, who was expected to enhance minority hiring by working in collaboration with the big contractors. This opened opportunities for people to be assimilated into jobs originating from government contracts. This minority hiring process was a cycle that would see all parties benefit.

For example, the workers would join organizations meaning that unions would have a national outreach, while workers and their families would get sustenance. The government would get sufficient workforce and the big contractors would win more contracts. However, the main problem, as Sherman Turner discovered, was ensuring that the contractors would stick to the policies and minority hiring was never side stepped or overlooked. The concern was that contractors would walk out of the arrangement and this meant the needs and wants of the workers would be ignored and essentially, minority hiring would cease to exist.

The only way to handle this eventuality is to have the policy on minority hiring put down on paper so that contractors and companies cannot act contrary to the precepts. It would be unfair to hire several workers and fire them for no reason or worse, mistreat them because of their ethnic or racial background. Sherman explains that it is possible to adhere to the guidelines. At one time, the big contractor acted against the policy on minority hiring by bringing in workers from the same race instead of half from each race represented in the region. He took a stern stand that saw an equal representation being adopted in that contract. Minority hiring is possible in the society, and when all parties are taking part and following the guidelines to the letter, no community will feel out of place as far as employment opportunities are concerned.


Sherman Turner is the author of this article on minority hiring. Find more information, about minority contracting here