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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • What about qualified? Is there an argument to be had about hiring someone that is more qualified rather than on diversity?

    I’m not trying to be facetious here. I work as a union electrician and we have a diverse group, but majority of our workforce are men. On one project we needed 2 crew to run trench conduit (an apprentice and journey level to stay in ratio) but because it was a government project the hiring required us to also stay in diversity ratio. So the project manager anticipated the difficulty and hire 3. A woman and 2 men. All 3 were working on the trench, but due to the nature of the work (harder physical labor) the woman ended up holding a sign for the remainder of 6 months she had to be there to “fill” the diversity hire, as the original planned 2 man crew ran the trench to stay on schedule.

    In this scenario should there be a bigger budget for diversity hire to compensate the additional labor required due to qualifications not being met? Of course it easily could have been a rock of a woman and 2 men who couldn’t lift a shovel too. But if that was the case the unqualified labor would have been rotated out instead of staying to fill a required diversity slot. It could have been 2 people like originally planned and both could have been women who were qualified to do the work. But that means it’s qualification over them filling their diversity roles.