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January 19, 2009
Iowa is getting close to meeting federal minority hiring practice standards but still lags in offering interviews to blacks, a state report shows.
The issue remains under scrutiny as a class-action lawsuit alleges that hiring and promotion bias in state government continues and after Gov. Chet Culver in 2007 mandated changes to state procedures.
"We recognize this wouldn't change overnight, but we also don't see the sense of urgency a problem of this size warrants," said Russell Lovell, a Drake University law professor and a spokesman for the Des Moines branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The NAACP is not part of the lawsuit but some of its members are working with the state to make changes in hiring practices.
When all minorities are factored together, the state in 2007 and 2008 nearly met federal guidelines that say minorities must be at least 80 percent as likely as whites to land an interview. Iowa's percentage was 78.9 percent.
But some civil rights advocates say that number is misleading, particularly when blacks are looked at separately.
The report presented to the state's diversity council by the Iowa attorney general's office this month indicates that the black-only qualified applicant interview rate in 2007 and 2008 was about 65 percent of the white interview rate.
That means that black candidates applying for jobs are roughly a third less likely to land interviews than their white peers. That, in turn, has led to fewer blacks being hired, some minority advocates said.
Qualified black applicants made up roughly 6 percent of the state's job pool and should, by proportion, have accounted for 271 new hires. Instead, 177 jobs went to blacks, according to an analysis of the report from the Des Moines branch of the NAACP.
That is an improvement over a state report that analyzed 2004 to 2006, when blacks were interviewed at 56 percent of the rate of whites. But the progress hasn't gone far enough, some say.
"Obviously we are concerned," said Abraham Funchess Jr., administrator for the Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans, whose group is helping with studies that examine hiring practices.
"We want to work as much as possible as a community so we can work to educate people and hopefully stimulate the kind of change that needs to take place."
State officials acknowledge that more improvements are needed in some areas but point out that minorities are overall getting a fair shot in many steps of the hiring process.
After landing an interview, minorities are 7 percent more likely than whites to get the job, according to state statistics.
Two state-commissioned reports released in 2007 outlined problems in the state's hiring practices.
The reports were commissioned in light of a Des Moines Register investigation in 2006 that showed claims of discrimination at Iowa Workforce Development and the Iowa Department of Human Services.
Between 2000 and 2006, the state settled discrimination lawsuits with at least eight people involving those agencies, paying nearly $500,000, the newspaper's investigation showed.
Soon after the reports, Culver issued an executive order requiring changes to the hiring practices criticized in the reports. His orders included creation of a diversity council to regularly review hiring policies and mandatory diversity training for all state employees who make hiring or promotion decisions.
A class-action lawsuit was filed soon after the reports were made public. Roughly 30 people have signed onto that action, which has not been resolved.
Rep. Wayne Ford, a Democrat from Des Moines and Iowa's longest-serving black legislator, cautioned against being overly critical of the state.
Ford, elected 12 years ago, had not seen the latest information presented by the Iowa attorney general's office. However, he said the 9 percentage point improvement in the likelihood of qualified black candidates being interviewed is a sign of improvement.
"To say that the state has not done anything but give lip service, that is obviously wrong," Ford said. "Some people say progress isn't moving fast enough, but that's individual perspective."
Thomas Newkirk, the attorney for the class-action lawsuit plaintiffs, said he believes the state's efforts to correct hiring discrimination have fallen far short in the past two years. That failure opens taxpayers to further liabilities, he said.
"You can't do much in the past in terms of liability, but you can going forward," Newkirk said.
"It's flabbergasting. I can't understand why the state won't take more action just, if nothing else, to save themselves some money."
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