HIRE Minnesota was instrumental in securing the MSFA’s commitment to a Stadium Equity Plan. We pushed the MSFA to release the plan so that the community had time to respond to it and so contractors could address the plan before a contract was signed. The plan was released in January and HIRE Minnesota suggested improvement to the draft plan, including clearer enforcement measures for hiring goals and a more transparent process for reviewing contractors’ reports.

We are pleased to see that this equity plan has been taken seriously by both the MSFA and Mortenson Construction. At last week’s announcement, Mortenson representatives spoke at great length about workforce inclusion and they named Thor Construction, a minority-owned firm, as a key partner in their work.

But we know that meeting the hiring goals requires not just words, but action. We know that the Stadium Equity Plan alone will not guarantee that people of color and women get a fair share of the stadium jobs. The goals will be met because HIRE Minnesota and activists like you will hold decision-makers accountable every step of the way. Join us!

32 percent is a big number. But we know Minnesota can meet it. According to the Office of the State Demographer, Minnesota’s construction workforce is already comprised of 32 percent people of color. Now we just need to get the jobs.

What would it mean for 32 percent of the stadium jobs to reach people of color? It would mean people of color would work over one million hours on this project. It would mean an estimated $20 million in wages would reach households of color. Perhaps most importantly, it would send a strong statement that public agencies can and should meet Minnesota’s new state hiring goals.

With your help, HIRE Minnesota will ensure that people of color get their fair share of the stadium jobs. We’ll be there every step of the way, making sure the MSFA and the contractors are doing everything they can to meet these goals, and provide information to the community.

Can you help? Tell us you’re interested and we’ll contact you throughout stadium construction to let you know how you can help secure well paying construction jobs for people of color. Together, we can end employment disparities in Minnesota.

Read the article >

Read the Minneapolis equity resolution >

Read the post >

Numbers like these don’t always tell the whole story. We all still know too many unemployed workers who are fighting for their fare share. But what the numbers do tell us is that we’re making progress. They tell us that the work we’ve been doing in the construction industry is starting to pay off. We’ve seen significant hiring increases for people of color in both MnDOT construction and CCLRT construction. We should continue to see this improve as we hold contractors accountable on the construction of the Viking’s stadium and future transportation projects.

But these statistics also show us that we cannot eliminate disparities by focusing on construction alone. That’s why we have made it a priority to ensure people of color are hired to fill all types of jobs associated with the Vikings stadium. HIRE Minnesota will continue to work with the city of Minneapolis and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Authority to ensure that all the contractors and vendors–and even the surrounding businesses–contribute to ending our employment disparities. We know it will take this comprehensive approach to move Minnesota from worst to first in employment equity.

When talk of a new Vikings stadium began in early 2012, HIRE Minnesota began listening with interest. Our coalition members had different opinions on whether the stadium should be built, but we all shared one core value: that major public investments that create jobs need to benefit everyone in our state. As the debate unfolded, HIRE Minnesota noticed that there was lots of talk about job creation, but no talk about who would get those jobs. We set out to change that.

The result of our work was a Stadium Equity Plan, a plan that will guide all investment decisions for the new stadium and could result in thousands of jobs for people of color in Minneapolis. That’s a big deal in a town with the worst black-white employment disparities in the nation.

The debate continues about whether public funds should be used to subsidize private business in this way. Opinions will continue to diverge for some time as to whether this is lemonade from lemons, or a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Is it frosting on the cake, or lipstick on a pig? But there’s one thing everyone agrees on. The Stadium Equity Plan is vitally important. Here’s how it happened.

Read HIRE Vikings Story >

This victory is a significant step in achieving our goal of having employment equity integrated into development work in our city. Council Member Hodges took the opportunity to thank the advocates who worked so hard to move the City Council. She was talking about the important role that HIRE played, as many of you contributed to this cause by writing letters, making phone calls or meeting with City Council members.

Today’s accomplishment will lead to more work over the coming months and years to ensure the results we need. But that work would have been a lot harder, and maybe not even possible, without today’s action from the City Council.

Minneapolis has the worst employment disparities by race of any major city, meaning that white people are three times more likely to be employed than black people. HIRE Minnesota, a community-based coalition, is fighting hard to change this situation. The new Vikings stadium legislation, which was signed into law by Governor Dayton last week, outlines clear and immediate opportunities to provide both short- and long-term employment for people of color. While coalition members within HIRE Minnesota have different opinions about whether public funds should be used to build a stadium, we all agree that if the Minneapolis City Council votes in favor of it next week, it should make the most of the opportunity to advance employment equity in Minneapolis.

Read More >

HIRE Minnesota organized activists from the Northside Community Response Team, a group of African American Minneapolis residents, to offer testimony at the hearing. The powerful testimonies provided by these leaders demonstrated the devastating effects that racial disparities have on their own lives, on the lives of their families and on the broader community.

One member of this group, a dynamic young woman named Tanisha Flowers, gave moving testimony about the need for new large-scale public investments to create permanent jobs and new training opportunities for people of color. Tanisha told the city council that she is neither for nor against the stadium, but that she is for racial equity in employment. Tanisha described the unacceptable racial disparities facing people of color in the Twin Cities, and she told the city council that we need “a long-term commitment to placing people in jobs with family-sustaining wages.”

We believe that the city councilmembers and the mayor heard a clear message about the need for sustained commitment to the economic vitality of people of color in Minneapolis. We were proud to partner with these great leaders, and we will continue to fight alongside them to eliminate Minnesota’s racial employment disparities.

This article in the Twin Cities Daily Planet outlines the actions taken by Minneapolis.  Raising the hiring goals was done specifically with an aim at reducing the employment disparities in our region.  A member of Mayor Rybak’s staff was quoted as saying, “The city of Minneapolis as an employer can and should do everything that we can to pull our weight in this effort.  It’s not only a moral imperative, it’s an economic imperative.”

We commend the City of Minneapolis and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights for demonstrating a commitment to remedying our region’s unacceptable racial employment disparities and moving Minnesota from worst to first.