Week 7 Discussion

NEW HAVEN FIREFIGHTERS

In late 2003, a total of 77 firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, took a test for promotion to the rank of lieutenant. Of the 43 whites who took the exam,

25 passed (58 percent); of the 19 blacks, six passed (24 percent); and of the 15

Hispanics, three passed (20 percent). Because there were only eight vacancies,

only the top scores were eligible for promotion. None of the six black

firefighters with passing scores was eligible.

Upon learning these results, and knowing that the city was nearly 60 percent

black and Hispanic, city lawyers advised the city's Civil Service Board to reject

the results, warning the city could be exposed to a race discrimination lawsuit

by minority firefighters if it let the exam stand. The board elected not to certify

the exam. Firefighters whose scores gave them a good chance at being

promoted filed suit, alleging their rights had been violated under the 1964 Civil

Rights Act and the Constitution's equal protection clause. The lead plaintiff,

Frank Ricci, who is dyslexic, said he prepared exhaustively for the test and

paid someone to record study material so he could learn by listening.

The U.S. District Court ruled for the city, concluding that the city's efforts to

avoid discrimination against minority firefighters was “race neutral” because

“all the test results were discarded, no one was promoted, and firefighters of

every race will have to participate in another selection process.”

The firefighters appealed the district judge's ruling, and the case landed with

a three-judge panel at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007. At the end

of oral arguments, one appeals judge, Sonia Sotomayor, told Ricci's lawyer,

“We're not suggesting that unqualified people be hired. But if your test is going

to always put a certain group at the bottom of the pass rate, so they're never,

ever going to be promoted, and there is a fair test that could be devised and

measures knowledge in a more substantive way, then why shouldn't the city

have an opportunity to look and see if it can develop that?” Ultimately, Judge

Sotomayor and her colleagues upheld the district judge's decision.

In June 2009, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in favor of the white firefighters.

Judge Antonin Scalia scoffed at the district court judge's claim that rejecting

the results was racially neutral. “It's neutral because you throw it out for the

losers as well as for the winners? That's neutrality?”

Some private-sector employers said the ruling might prompt them to use tests

more in making hiring and promotion decisions. But the decision had others

scrutinizing their existing tests to ensure they are free of bias. The impact of

the decision is likely to be more muted in the private sector than in government

agencies because private employers are less likely to use a test as the single or

predominant criterion for a job promotion.

Ironically, civil service exams were supposed to be the fairest way for cities

to hire the best firefighters and police, while opening the doors to more

minorities. Exams, it was thought, provided a color-blind way to measure

performance and promote minorities into leadership roles within

organizations that had clearly discriminated in the past. The problem is that,

for reasons not understood, minorities have not performed as well as whites on

tests.

But are multiple-choice tests to measure firefighters' retention of information

the optimal way to predict how someone would react at a four-alarm fire?

Arguably, the most important skills of any fire department lieutenant or captain

are sound judgment, steady command presence, and the ability to make life or

death decisions under pressure.

In any event, New Haven city officials concluded that their written test was

flawed and that there was another trusted method to select firefighting

lieutenants and captains that posed less of a disadvantage to blacks and

Hispanics. That method relies largely on assessment centers where applicants

are evaluated in simulated real-life situations to see how they would handle

them. Supporters of the idea say assessment centers do far better than written

exams in measuring leadership and communications skills and an applicant's

ability to handle emergencies. (You will learn more about assessment centers

in this chapter.)

Besides the relatively narrow issue of how best to promote firefighters, this

case also raises a broader issue posed to Sotomayor during her Supreme Court

confirmation hearings in July 2009. Senator Herb Kohl, a Democrat from

Wisconsin, asked an interesting question about 2028. By then, according to

recent Supreme Court jurisprudence, some kinds of affirmative action may no

longer be permissible. In Grutter v. Bolinger (2003), Sandra Day O'Conner

upheld race-based discrimination in college admissions, but only for the

current generation. Such policies “must be limited in time,” she wrote, adding

that “the court expects that 25 years now, the use of racial preferences will no

longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” Indeed, by 2023,

if current demographic trends continue, nonwhites—blacks, Hispanics, and

Asians—will constitute a majority of Americans under 18. By 2042, they will

constitute a national majority. In fact, in several large states today, these

minorities already constitute a majority.

Is there a difference between allowing reverse discrimination in the wake of

segregation and discriminating in the name of diversity indefinitely? How

effective was the New Haven Fire Department's promotional system in 2003?

How do the U.S. armed forces handle these issues?

As you can see in Figure 10.1, the three primary goals of human resources

management (HRM) are to attract an effective workforce to the organization,

develop the workforce to its potential, and maintain it over the long term. Most

government and nonprofit organizations employ human resource (HR)

professionals to perform these three functions. HR specialists focus on one of

the human resources areas, such as recruitment of employees or administration

of wage or benefit programs, whereas HR generalists have responsibility in

more than one area. But, in a real sense, every public administrator needs to

be an HR generalist.

Note the box in the upper left of Figure 10.1. Organizations that are truly

results oriented—whether public, nonprofit, or for-profit—consistently strive

to ensure that their day-to-day HR activities support their organization's

mission and move them closer to accomplishing their strategic goals. That is,

they strive to ensure that their core processes support mission-related

outcomes. Such organizations rely increasingly on a well-defined mission to

form the foundation for what they do, and how they do it, every day. For

example, many successful public and private enterprises integrate their HR

management activity into their organization's mission—rather than treat it as

an isolated support function. This integrated approach may include such things

as tying individual performance management, career development programs,

and pay and promotion standards to the organization's mission and vision.

Before looking at HRM today, we need to review its development in the

United States. But this review, which is presented in the first section of the

chapter, is not history for history's sake. The development of what has

traditionally been called public personnel administration in the United States

has not been a series of revolutions but rather a process of accumulation. This

means that some of the practices begun in George Washington's administration

are still followed. So, to make sense of HRM in the early part of the twenty-

first century, we must begin in the late part of the eighteenth.

As indicated in Figure 10.1, part of what determines whether a particular

HRM activity is effective is the environment that surrounds the activity. The

environment can be segmented into its external and internal components. In

the second section, as we examine both, it should become clear that the

environment is one of the most important factors in determining appropriate

HR practices and effective HR management—and ultimately the success or

failure of an agency or a public administrator.

The remaining sections of the chapter focus on the three activities identified

in Figure 10.1. The third section will cover resources planning, recruiting and

testing, and classification and compensation; the fourth section, training and

management development and advancement; and the fifth, discipline and

grievances and labor relations.