Posted on 08/10/2007 5:27:29 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
PORT HUDSON, La. -
A literacy test used to screen Georgia-Pacific Corp. applicants discriminated against blacks because blacks were far more likely than whites to fail the test, the federal Labor Department said.
Utility workers at a paper mill don't need to read well, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Georgia Pacific disagrees, but has stopped using the nationally standardized Test of Adult Basic Education's literacy exam and will pay $749,076 in back pay and interest to 399 black people who applied over the past two years, spokeswoman Patty Prats-Swanson said Wednesday.
"We may not agree but we have decided to work with the Department of Labor and we have changed our policy," she said. She was out of the office Thursday; another spokeswoman did not immediately return a call.
Diana Peterson, a spokeswoman in the department's Dallas office, did not know what percentages of black and white applicants failed the test, which is part of a set created by The Mcgraw-Hill Companies of Chicago. It uses bus schedules, product labels and other "real-life stimuli" to test reading.
She also did not know whether non-black applicants who failed the test will be compensated.
Federal contractors "must ensure that a test is valid for the particular job if it disproportionately screens out applicants from a protected group," Fred Azua Jr., regional director for the department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
Prats-Swanson said literacy matters because Georgia-Pacific, which is based in Atlanta, often promotes rather than hiring upper-level workers from outside - and literacy is important for higher level jobs.
Nobody complained about the test. The compliance office made its conclusions from a routine audit for 2002 and 2003, conducted because of a federal contract. The company provides tissue products to the Defense Commissary Agency.
Georgia-Pacific will hire 24 of the 399 applicants and begin a self-monitoring program for two years to ensure all hiring practices comply with the law.
The Port Hudson mill employs 910 people. It makes toilet paper and paper towels sold under the Brawny, Quilted Northern and Angel Soft names, as well as office paper.
The paper business has many stages ~ even the company is agreeing that you don't need to know how to read to do the job at the stage where they use the most "utility workers".
Unless you have had first hand experience with these fools, and I'm not saying that you haven't, you cannot know how close to the truth that statement is.
The dumbing down of America continues.
“Because I just cannot fathom this being reality.”
It is.
This has happened quite a few times in the past twenty years or so. This is another facet of affirmative action.
"Nobody complained about the test. The compliance office made its conclusions from a routine audit for 2002 and 2003, conducted because of a federal contract."
Apparently, even illiterates know what Federal regulators cannot fathom: not being able to read can be dangerous to yourself and to others.
fo’ shizzle!
Just why do you think it might be necessary for a utility worker in a paper mill to be able to read that? < /sarcasm >
“against blacks because blacks were far more likely than whites to fail the test, the federal Labor Department said.”
Yes dem black folks ain’t to gooood at reding an riting. We jeeest gota make things eaier for dem.
The above is in satire of course. This type of thing is really insulting to blacks. The government is basically saying that blacks are not able to read and write. What buffoons the Labor Dept folks are.
Not saying that doesn't happen, but the latest wellknown event of that type involved a student at Purdue University who decided to slip into a dormitory through a wire room that had a damaged latch. He was electrocuted almost immediately. Took a month to find his body.
This is troo, becuz it makes it eesier for the guvermint too steel moor ov they're paychek.
Actually, this is in Port Hudson, Louisiana, just north of Baton Rouge. Not too far from a 600 trailer Katrina village in Baker.
Then they say, BTW, this also discriminates against blacks because they are more likely to be illiterate (in that area).
Seems pretty clear what was going on. Not that someone hadn't thought this one up before ~ probably many times.
The labor analysts who caught this on an audit undoubtedly knew what to look for ~ and found it. Now, just how is it you suppose they knew.
Aren’t test by their very nature discriminatory? I mean, don’t you give a test to discriminate between those who know the material and those who don’t?
Does this means there is good discrimination and bad discrimination?
It must be pretty tricky writing a test that discriminates without being discriminatory.
Tires me out just thinking about it.
Already corrected the point. Literacy continues to be a problem in parts of the country, and odds are good this is one of the.
Considering the attitudes of blacks when it comes to learning how to read (it being a “white thing”), it’s no shock that they fail the “white” test in disproportionate numbers.
The crime here is that whites are punished for the attitudes blacks tend to have.
Oh I understand that. I just find it very demeaning that a certain racial group (blacks) are assumed to not be literate.
It basically assumes that they are a lower class of citizen and shouldn’t be expected to be literate.
Georgia-Pacific won't have to worry about this sort of thing if they move their plant to Chin.
A laborer's job might require that you can readily identify (and use) a shovel, hoe, rake, axe, prybar and sledgehammer.
You could ask someone to match the words for those items with a picture. That can be done two ways ~ make a list of the words, and a list of the pictures, and ask the applicant to draw a line from the word to the picture of the item to which it refers.
Or, you could show an applicant a shovel and ask him to show you what it does.
There are variations on this.
Obviously if all you want a guy to do is dig a hole he doesn't need to know how to read the word "shovel" ~ rather, he needs to know how to handle a shovel.
If 99% of your applicants were black and could not read, you could give them the written test to keep from hiring them.
Not that anyone would do that in this progressive day and age, but it has been known that this happens.
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