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.
Not that anyone would do that in this progressive day and age, but it has been known that this happens.”
Better that some illiterates be discriminated against than fried. Better they not he hired than not be alive.
In industrial environments, illiteracy kills. Discrimination may hurt, but there are worse things, like DYING! Dying of some stupid error because one can’t read.
And, other than from the commies, did the idea that a private employer’s job roster was a public resource? Why shouldn’t the employer be able to hire whomever he feels will gived the best value for the salary?
As we al;lowed the rpemises of communism to infiltrate our agencies, those agencies drove American investment and American industry out of America.
Good for Communism, bad for America.
“
Remind me again why we elected a Republican president.
Well, it is halfway between Georgia and the Pacific (ocean).
the nationally standardized Test of Adult Basic Education’s literacy exam.
“They didn’t appeal because they don’t want to be tagged as racists.”
That horse has left the barn. Their only shot at recovery was winning on appeal.
This means that guys like me who had a high school education really need not have one anymore... Anyone can get menial jobs...The government will eventually decide who works where..The government is slapping down those of us who played by the rules(i.e. the current immigration fiasco) In reality the government is supporting the dumbing down of America. Thay know that a segment of the poulation’s kids are just not going to school anymore,also that our public school system in many places is a sham too..
Just think what some of our colleges are REALLY like..The government has meddled with those too...Political correctness and diversity rules...It’s all gonna end in Socialism....As a country we now have to import our doctors and scientists, and engineers because our kids are too stupid to fill the positions.
No wonder some Dog like Hellary is runnin’ for president..
Managers that I have known have always used education as a means of measuring motivation and ability to complete goals. Since you cannot find out much of an applicant's background, it was a substitute to weed out the duds. When you are forced to accept minimally qualified workers, you have commoditized the job and commoditized jobs are easy to ship overseas.
That could well be what skewed the numbers...
I blame the liberals for this, since they are the ones invested in the system that dumbs down African Americans.
Unfreaking believable.
Where’s the incentive to even read well enough to read a dang pickle jar label?
I’m still wondering why there are “protected groups”. Protected from what? Learning to read? Sheesh!
That’s the essence of “liberalism” - punish those who make the right decisions in order to alleviate the consequences of those that make poor decisions.
When did that happen and can you back that up with some documentation?
Just curious.
The world must be made to fit their preconceptions!
What about hiring tests that are rigged the other way, ie “race norming” of answers?
Race norming being the practice of assigning a differently weighted value to a correct answer on a hiring test based on one’s group membership.
That’s one of the dirty little secrets of the hiring process in government and corporate America that doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention.
Even when the race normed tests are “competitive”, the powers that be get the desired outcomes by rigging the game still further. The US Postal Service is the example I am personally familiar with.
Years ago the exam truly was competitive and they hired by score, from the top down, a 99 receiving consideration before a 95 and so on. The practice for many years now has been to determine a minimum “pass” score, of 70, and to randomly generate names from the qualifying roster for interviews, an interview practically speaking, being an offer of employment.
At least the claim is that names are generated randomly. Who knows. I haven’t seen many new white male faces at the PO for a very long time.
Couldn’t be that Xavier del Junco, member of the Postal Board of governors was correct years ago, before he was shushed up, that white males were the group most discriminated against in the PO could it?
Koch Industries of Wichita, KS bought GA-PAC a few years ago. They cleaned out virtually the entire middle management staff at every one of their mills and pared the hourly shifties to the bone. Their return (from what I’ve heard) is > 30 percent on their investment.
Isn't it great that someone can finish $100K worth of primary and secondary school and not read? So not only do we reward the teacher's unions for their incompetence, we reward the cretins who can't read in the end as well.
I wonder what the "stupidity" premium on running a business is in the US compared to other countries.
Think of it not as "protected from" but as "protected by". These supposedly fragile, hapless groups are protected by gummint. Though composed of adults, they cannot be allowed to fend for themselves without liberal meddling.
“She also did not know whether non-black applicants who failed the test will be compensated.”
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/297106/laughing_baby/
The POD, and its successor, the USPS, faced an interesting demographic shift in employment in the 1970s. The number of white applicants dropped and the number of black applicants increased. At the same time senior white employees were less able to pass the supervisory examination than were senior black employees.
The difference turned out to be a consequence of different levels of education. The typical black applicant for supervisory position had most of a college degree and the typical white applicant had only a highschool diploma.
My clerk/carrier/mailhandler test change came right in the middle of the demographic change. Interestingly enough it gave the white highschool graduates an edge over the black not yet college graduates because of the varying average backgrounds of the two populations. White applicants simply had more familiarity with working in industrial environments than blacks (at that time).
What you are perceiving as something akin to "race norming" is the result of a couple of lawsuits filed on behalf of white supervisory applicants years ago. So, yeah, there's race norming in there, but not the one you thought.
The logic behind the pass/fail standard (70% correct) is simple ~ you are either able to participate in an industrial environment or not. Secondly, virtually all postal craft jobs require additional training, and you either pass it or you fail it.
From the company's point of view, a pool of qualified applicants is desirable and once achieved, the next step is to make sure that new hires can be successfully trained.
Those who cannot be trained are, of course, dropped from the rolls or advised to try a different sort of employment ~ e.g at 2 AM maybe.
Postal work is highly mechanized these days, and there are billions of dollars worth of sensitive automated equipment pushing mail. It would be impossible to test all applicants to see who among them were most likely to be able to run these systems, or perform some pretty high level maintenance. The best way to do it is to hire people who can safely walk in the door, and then train them to do the jobs. If they can't do the jobs, then escort them back out the door.
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