SEA Board Meetings are typically held on the third Thursday of each month at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, 3rd Floor, at 10:30am. Meeting changes will be advertised in a newspaper of general circulation at least 24 hours prior to the scheduled meeting.

For SEA Board Meeting minutes or questions, please call 412-393-0200.

---
We continue to connect the issues and focus on similarities rather than differences between workers in Pittsburgh and workers in other parts of the world.
---

February 22, 2008

P.J. Dick Incorporated

Walter Czekaj, Executive Director of Field Operations

Jennifer Howe, Project M-BWE Coordinator

PO Box 98100

Pittsburgh, PA 15227-0500

412-462-9300

Fax 412-462-2588

Dear Mr. Czekaj and Ms. Howe:

It was a pleasure to meet each of you at the Igloo Club meeting Wednesday night. The presentation was very informative and all of the participants seem very committed to meeting the M-BWE goals and goals related to minority labor participation. The Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) has hosted two recent workshops where we discussed the obstacles and potential for a “breakthrough” in minority labor participation. These took place at the October 2, 2007 Racial Equity and Empowerment Summit hosted by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, County Executive Dan Onorato and the Racial Equity and Empowerment
Summit Coalition, and on January 26 at the 10th Annual Black & White Reunion Summit Against Racism.

The role of contractors, such as P.J. Dick, in achieving a “breakthrough” for minority labor participation cannot be underestimated. Such issues as the contract’s role in hiring, developing and implementing EEOC plans, and the specifics of your collective bargaining agreements relative to the apprenticeship programs have been issues we have wrestled with in each of our workshops. We are very hopeful that the Penguins area development can be an important step in the “breakthrough” in minority labor participation we seek. Towards the end of the meeting on Wednesday, I asked you to follow up on three items. They are:

* The issue of monitoring worksites for minority labor participation is very important. We want to evaluate the potential for using the certified payroll system to track the total number of workers from each union on the job site, their union, whether they are apprentices or not, and their racial and gender demographic information. Based on our prior conversations with Clarence Curry of the SEA, it seems as though all prior “monitoring” has been done with visual spot checks. Such monitoring is insufficient.

* We are requesting all 17 of the collective bargaining agreements to which P.J. Dick is signatory. It is critically important that we understand, specifically, how the contractors conduct hiring and participate with the unions in the apprenticeship programs.

* We have not heard enough specific feedback about both the Minority Labor Education Agency and the Renaissance 2 pre-apprenticeship programs. We need to know, for example, how many applicants their have been, how many have completed their program and have gone into apprenticeship training programs, how many of those have completed those programs, and how many have been retained and are currently working labor union members.

Thank you for your attention to these urgent matters.

Sincerely Your,

Kenneth Miller

cc: B-PEP/Racial Equity Monitoring Project/ Carl Redwood, One Hill/ Clarence Curry, SEA/ Tonya Payne, City Council/EEOC / Darlene Harris, City Council/SEA