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AUGUST 1998

State agency staff weighted

toward women and minorities

SUNNYSIDE (Thursday, 8-6-98)--Sunnyside's state offices of Employment Security and the Dept. of Social and Health Services apparently aren't meeting their affirmative action quotas according to state records.

 

Staffing at Sunnyside's two state agencies appears to reflect a real shortage of whites, and white males in particular, according to documents.

 

It would appear, at least on the surface, the staffing patterns fly in the face of affirmative action requirements for parity based on population statistics.

 

Given the fact that state staff draw excellent, steady salaries with top fringe benefits, including medical, dental, vision and pension, these tax-paid jobs are "plums", desired by white males as much as anyone else.

 

In Sunnyside proper, the ethnic breakdown in the general population is 58.6 % minority persons, and 41.4% majority persons, with the obvious irony.

 

Outside Sunnyside, in both state agencies' wider service area, minorities max out at about 18% with whites at around 82%.

Yet those percentages are nowhere near reflected in staffing patterns of the local DSHS and Employment Security offices.

 

At Sunnyside's DSHS office located in the Mid-Valley Mall, the staff roster indicates:

• 73% minorities, mostly Hispanics, and 27% white, mostly females, in the community services dept.;
• 81% minorities, mostly Hispanics, and 19% white, mostly females, in the Child Protection Service (CPS) dept.
• 76% minority and 24% white, mostly females, in the food stamps dept.
• At Employment Security, located at 800 Custer Ave., the breakdown is 77% minority, mostly Hispanic, and 23% white, mostly females.

 

Local staffing patterns appear off kilter when set alongside the current state government's affirmative-action agenda. And it might irritate those who believe affirmative action means government staff percentages should reflect ethnic parity with the general population.

 

Though affirmative action might be scuttled in Washington--as it was in California--when Initiative 200 goes before voters this fall, it is, for now, the law of the land.

 

Those responsible for local hiring and firing at Sunnyside's state agencies include the DSHS' Maria Vigil and Marty Butkovich, and ES' Pete Saenz.

 

YVN is awaiting comment from those administrators at this time. (Comment was never forthcoming from any state level--ed.)