Contention over the diversity of the New York City construction industry has been present since the 1960s as blacks and Hispanics have sought greater access to this major source of middle-class jobs. Because most major construction in the 1960s was done under collective bargaining agreements, the discussion about diversity focused on how workers become apprentices and join construction trade unions.

As Figueroa, Grabelsky, and Lamare (2013) note,

Dating back to the 1960s, the unionized construction industry was a focal point for the civil rights movement as communities of color witnessed a construction boom offering the false promise of good jobs for urban residents. Because of discriminatory hiring practices, the overwhelming majority of union construction jobs went to white workers. In New York City, for example, 92 percent of building trades union members [were] white. Some of the skilled trades had virtually no African American members.

Governments at all levels have sought to increase diversity in the building trades over the last 50 years (Fuchs, Warren, and Bayer 2014). Accusations of racial exclusion persist, leveled by civil rights organizations and anti-union advocates, and tend to focus on black workers in the union sector, with no attention paid to the nonunion sector.

This report develops new data to assess the racial and ethnic diversity of New York City construction employment in both the union and nonunion sectors for the 2006 to 2015 period, and gauges changes in the diversity of construction employment by comparing the composition of the younger and older segments of the workforce and shifts in the demographic composition of union apprenticeships. The analyses pay special attention to the employment and wages of black workers in construction since most of the controversies, to this day, tend to focus on the inclusion of black workers. The analyses also look at Hispanic construction workers and minorities overall compared with whites. The analyses do not examine the related issues of inclusion of workers by gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

Specifically, we use Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys of individual workers over the years from 2006 to 2015 to examine the race/ethnic diversity of construction employment in both the union and nonunion sectors and among all blue-collar workers (except construction). There has been much discussion of diversity in the union sector but very little attention to the hiring decisions of nonunion contractors. Diversity of all blue-collar employment, outside of construction, is presented to provide a benchmark for assessing the diversity within the union and nonunion construction sectors, and within subsectors of the construction sector. We also examine the increasing diversity of union apprenticeships over the last two decades, building on the work of Fuchs, Warren, and Bayer (2014) published by the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Last, we examine the total earnings gained by the black community due to the greater representation and wages earned by black workers in the union than the nonunion construction sector. Key findings in the report are summarized below.

New York City’s union construction sector employs a greater share of black workers and pays them more than the nonunion construction sector, and unions are drawing many more blacks into construction through apprenticeships compared to 20 years ago

• Black workers are far more represented in the union construction workforce (where they account for 21.2 percent of employment) than in the nonunion construction workforce (where they account for 15.8 percent) and minorities overall now make up 55.1 percent of NYC blue-collar union construction workers.
   
• An examination of the younger workforce, ages 18–40, reflects the most recent hiring decisions and best predicts future employment patterns. It finds that among younger workers, black workers are even more underrepresented in the nonunion (14.8 percent) relative to the union (21.0 percent) construction sector. Among older workers (ages 41–64) black workers make up 21.3 percent of union construction workers but a lesser 17.2 percent share of nonunion construction workers.
   
• Minorities accounted for 61.8 percent of all New York City residents’ union apprenticeships in 2014, far higher than the 36.3 percent share in 1994. Black apprentice participation roughly doubled, rising from 18.3 percent in 1994 to 35.1 percent 20 years later in 2014.

• Black union construction workers earn 36.1 percent more than black nonunion construction workers. Because black workers have better wages and a greater employment share in the union construction sector relative to the nonunion construction sector, the presence of unions and collective bargaining in New York City greatly boosts overall annual wages to the black community from construction—by 83 percent, or $152 million each year. Claims that unions have hurt the black community are seriously misguided and contrary to readily available evidence and the absence of unions and collective bargaining would hurt, not help, black workers.

Read full article: here

 

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Source: Economic Policy Institute

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