Construction Dive has chronicled discrimination against minorities on jobsites since Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin suffocated George Floyd under his knee two years ago this week.<\/p>\n
After spiking in 2020, the number of nooses reported on U.S. construction sites fell by about half, to seven. But that’s the same number as 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
The same number as before Turner CEO Peter Davoren expressed disgust<\/a> at the \u201cugliness\u201d he saw, and urged employees to have the courage \u201cto trust each other to make sweeping changes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The same number as before Mortenson CEO Dan Johnson joined 30 Minnesota business leaders<\/a> who said they were \u201chorrified\u201d by what happened on their doorstep.<\/p>\n The same number as before Chicago-based CMA Construction President and Community Development Commissioner Cornelius Griggs, who’s African American,\u00a0called on employees<\/a> and businesses to take a stand against racism, writing, \u201cThis is a conversation that we can no longer avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n So what has changed in the past two years in construction, where 88% of workers are White and 6% are Black compared to 12% in the general workforce?<\/p>\n For this article, Construction Dive asked CEOs how they were delivering on their promises to promote equality and end discrimination and hate crimes on jobsites. We also interviewed minority contractors and frontline workers.\u00a0Our findings showed slow and nuanced progress.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me it\u2019s kind of gotten better, because I\u2019m working with people who at least aren\u2019t openly racist,\u201d said Kadence Jimenez, a Mexican-American journeywoman carpenter who once found a swastika<\/a> scrawled on a piece of drywall she was asked to throw out.<\/p>\n And she\u2019s quick to say companies need to do more. On smaller jobsites, for example, she\u2019s more likely to see suicide prevention signs. The suicide rate for men in construction<\/a> is nearly double other professions.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Jimenez questions whether efforts to bring that rate down are merely treating the symptom, not the disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not addressing the root cause of some suicides, which is people being harassed on the jobsite,\u201d Jimenez said.<\/p>\n May 31, 2020: Demonstrators protest George Floyd’s death in Boston.\u00a0 In the months following Floyd’s murder and a related wave of social protests,\u00a0hate-motivated episodes at construction sites gained increased attention. Construction Dive documented more than 20 bias-motivated events<\/a>, including nooses and racist graffiti across North America in 2020. (Read our award-winning series on racism<\/a> in construction here.)<\/p>\n Construction leaders tried to confront the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, in summer 2020, hundreds of construction companies backed the Associated General Contractors\u2019\u00a0Culture of Care<\/a> campaign, pledging to make jobsites free from harassment, hazing and bullying. Today, 720 companies have signed on, less than 3% of AGC\u2019s 27,000 members.\u00a0<\/p>\n By fall of 2021, six major contractors, including Turner, Mortenson and Gilbane, launched the inaugural Construction Inclusion Week<\/a>\u00a0to combat hate in the industry. More than 1,000 firms participated.<\/p>\n Yet, hate crimes continued to grab global headlines, including a high-profile case<\/a> last year, where several nooses were found at an Amazon warehouse construction site in Connecticut.\u00a0<\/p>\n While reports of incidents slowed last winter, in March, an employee at a subcontractor admitted hanging a noose at a Meta construction site<\/a> in Utah.<\/p>\n In order to measure what has changed in construction, it’s helpful to look at numbers within the industry. According to data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the number of reported noose-related incidents on construction sites spiked in 2020, before leveling off again last year.<\/p>\n Year SOURCE: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a hearing last week<\/a> that detailed the pervasive history of racism in construction, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said nooses on jobsites had become “chillingly common.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Burrows called out Skanska USA for failing to effectively investigate a 2009 incident where a Black buck hoist operator had urine and feces dumped on him<\/a> from a portable bathroom. Skanska settled the case in 2015 for $95,000. A Skanska representative declined to comment for this article.\u00a0<\/p>\n The EEOC hearing came just three days after 10 Black people were shot dead in a Buffalo supermarket by a White man, in what investigators said was a premeditated act of hate against African Americans.<\/p>\n “The shooting shows that hate and racism is alive and well,” said David Chincanchan of the Workers Defense Project, an advocacy group for low-wage, immigrant construction workers, during the hearing. “To some, it may not seem that this is a relevant news story to our focus on the construction industry\u2026 [but] as we all know here today, our workplaces are not exempt from this.”\u00a0<\/p>\n June 3, 2020: Demonstrators march down Pennsylvania Avenue during a protest against police brutality and the death of George Floyd. In the past six months, construction pros say that even as hateful acts have continued on construction sites \u2014\u00a0many involving graffiti in port-a-potties \u2014\u00a0their cadence has appeared to slow.<\/p>\n For example, Turner, the largest general contractor in the country, which oversees 110,000 workers on about 1,500 jobsites daily, began tracking all suspected bias-motivated events in July 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Like the EEOC data and media reports, its results also show a prevalence of incidents in 2020 following Floyd’s death, followed by a decline.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 SOURCE: Turner Construction<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “We were having one a week for a while up until the third quarter of last year,” Turner\u2019s Davoren told Construction Dive. “Then in the fourth quarter last year and the first quarter this year, it slowed to maybe one every two to three weeks. We went for two months when we had none.”<\/p>\n Turner assigns someone to walk each of its sites twice daily, looking for signs of hate. That could include nooses, graffiti or even inappropriate verbal barbs. Turner’s policy then calls for superintendents to notify headquarters within two hours of a possible incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n The same day, Turner\u2019s reaction-response team, of which Davoren is a member, holds a call to discuss the incident, determine motivation and discuss a response. Davoren reports any incidents companywide in his weekly town hall meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cOur approach is, if it happens, it\u2019s a Turner problem,\u201d Davoren said. \u201cWe make it an obligation to report it, and stress to workers that if they don\u2019t call it in, the person that hate is intended for is intimidated and has a great deal of anxiety because no one did anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The lull in bias-motivated acts at Turner’s jobs was broken in April when someone wrote \u201cKKK \u2014\u00a0White Power\u201d in a toilet at the Block 6 office construction site in Bellevue, Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n Turner shut the job down, notified law enforcement and offered a $100,000 reward for information on the perpetrator, according to Davoren. Turner has interviewed dozens of people, but hasn\u2019t found the responsible party yet.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we find that person, they\u2019ll be terminated,\u201d Davoren said.<\/p>\n Then last week,\u00a0Turner fired another worker<\/a> on an Albany, New York, school project for displaying a Confederate flag decal on the hood of his car.<\/p>\n Turner isn\u2019t alone in that approach. In March,\u00a0Mortenson fired<\/a> the Southland Industries worker it determined had placed the noose at the Meta jobsite in Eagle Mountain, Utah.<\/p>\n Frontline workers at construction sites note there has been a palpable change in attitudes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t say these problems have been abolished, because I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to happen in our lifetimes, but more people are mindfully watching. There\u2019s an attitude of, \u2018If you see something, say something,’\u201d said Nate McCoy, executive director of the Oregon Chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Melvin Norman, a Black scaffolding rigger who was once told to ride in the bed of a sweltering pickup to make room for his White co-workers\u2019 lunches<\/a> in the air-conditioned cab, echoed, “There\u2019s been a lot of education about the mishaps of African Americans on the jobsite.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Northwest, he points to the Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center\u2019s Safe From Hate<\/a> program, which is similar to the AGC\u2019s Culture of Care, and a support group he runs for African-American workers to talk about their experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n But he still sees racism on jobsites, adding bluntly, \u201cSome contractors, that\u2019s just who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n For Jimenez, the carpenter who found a swastika on site, at the smaller jobsites she works on, the industry\u2019s broader rallying cry around diversity and inclusion since Floyd\u2019s murder can\u2019t always be heard. \u201cWith bigger jobs, I feel like they probably do drill it into people’s brains that this is an inclusive jobsite,\u201d Jimenez said. “But I feel like it’s more talk than anything.”<\/p>\n June 9, 2020: A girl holds her fist in the air while visiting the memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis. Greg Page, the Black president of Waldorf, Maryland-based Page Building Group, who once sent his White partner<\/a> to apply for a bank loan out of fear his application would be denied if he appeared in person, pointed to Gilbane\u2019s recent pledge<\/a> to place $4 billion in contracts with underrepresented firms.<\/p>\n \u201cI was impressed by Gilbane\u2019s announcement,\u201d Page said, but cautioned those kinds of commitments need fewer loopholes to be more than just lip service.<\/p>\n For example, instead of grouping minorities, women and veteran-owned contractors together \u2014\u00a0a tactic that\u2019s often used to meet benchmarks on large projects \u2014\u00a0Page said diversity programs should be tailored to target different groups with specific goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s also the view of Wendell Stemley, emeritus national director at the National Association of Minority Contractors. Like others, he said inclusion initiatives often cast their net as widely as possible, lumping small businesses, women-owned firms, minorities and veteran-run companies together.<\/p>\n Despite progress in the private sector to develop minority inclusion programs, he said the byzantine requirements result in some firms gaming requirements<\/a>, appearing to benefit underrepresented firms, when they actually don\u2019t.<\/p>\n For example,\u00a0pass-through schemes<\/a> to meet diversity goals are common, meaning a minority contractor is given work on paper, while a majority firm gets the contract on the ground. And compliance and enforcement<\/a> for meeting diversity goals is often weak.<\/p>\n For Stemley, the results of those programs over the past two years since George Floyd\u2019s murder remain \u201cunfulfilled promises.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge Floyd brought this whole thing to a head,\u201d Stemley said. \u201cBut diversity is a tricky word. If we want real change, we need to stop playing games with these programs.\u201d<\/p>\n This item was originally posted here: Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nMaddie Meyer via Getty Images<\/p>\nNoose incidents in construction<\/h6>\n
\n2015
\n2016
\n2017
\n2018
\n2019
\n2020
\n2021
\n# of charges
\n8
\n8
\n5
\n7
\n7
\n15
\n7<\/p>\nRacist incidents in construction since 2020<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\nTasos Katopodis via Getty Images<\/p>\nReports of suspected bias-motivated events, Turner Construction<\/h6>\n
\n2020, July-Dec (6 months)
\n2021 (12 months)
\n2022, through May 16 (4.5 months)
\n# of reports
\n80
\n88
\n7
\nMonthly average
\n13.3
\n7.3
\n1.6<\/p>\n
\nBrandon Bell via Getty Images<\/p>\n