Larry Mishel spends nearly 650 words acknowledging the accuracy of my op-ed "Construction unions leave minority workers behind," writing, "Black workers do earn less than whites in union construction" likely because "blacks [are] more heavily represented in lower-paid occupations."
I'm glad we agree on that point.
Mishel, whose think tank has received nearly $70,000 from Gary LaBarbera's Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York since 2016, is the third surrogate to publicly respond to my editorial on the lack of diversity in the city's unionized building trades. Ironically, all three of these union responses came from white men. Indeed, all the top leaders of New York City's building trades unions are white males.
Readers looking for a more-accurate representation of the so-called diversity in the unionized building trades should refer to a 2016 Crain's op-ed by three members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B. They describe an "old-boy network" that—far from being "ancient history"—still keeps the union almost entirely white. The writers called it "a direct consequence of union leadership building barriers to equal opportunity for nonwhite workers."
Rather than paying for sympathetic studies from union-aligned think tanks, Mr. LaBarbera should submit the data requested by the president of the NAACP New York State Conference nearly three years ago, including "comprehensive data showing the exact number of African-American and Hispanic members currently employed in each building trade" and "how many African-American and Hispanic apprentices advanced to full-time employment."
If Mr. LaBarbera is unwilling to provide this proof of diversity, perhaps he and his hired spokesman doth protest too much.
