Salt Lake County's affirmative-action policies are bringing the county closer to its long-term goals to hire more minorities, Mayor Peter Corroon said this week.
Halfway through a three-year plan to increase minority hiring, Salt Lake County has exceeded its aims in hiring Latinos but is still trying to meet its goals for three other groups.
That's progress, Corroon told a women's group this week, and change takes time.
"I do not believe we are derelict in hiring a diverse work force," Corroon said in response to recent criticism of the county's hiring practices. "It's not as horrendous as people might think. We're working on it."
Even so, women don't earn as much as their male counterparts in Utah's largest county. Men earn about $3 more per hour than do women.
The disparity is not as bad as it used to be, Corroon said. In 1995, men earned roughly $3.50 more than women. The only way to close that wage gap is by hiring more women and ethnic minorities, he said.
"We are no longer far shy of affirmative-action goals," Corroon said. "We are making progress and closing pay gaps. We have goals, and we are making progress toward those goals, and we are closing the gaps."
Former County Mayor Nancy Workman first noticed the minority-hiring shortfall at the end of her administration in 2004. To combat the problem, she initiated a three-year affirmative-action program to ensure the county's hiring practices "at a minimum" matched the area's diverse labor force.
The county has until October 2007 to employ a work force that includes the same proportion of women and minorities as are employed in the overall Salt Lake County work force.
According to a one-year progress report, much work still must be done.
The numbers of American Indians in the county labor pool decreased in one category since the the goals were first set, while the other two labor categories saw only slight increases.
Overall, minority hiring in the county does not match Utah's growing minority population, the report states.
Although women fill jobs in the highest levels of county government, work to increase their overall numbers in the county's work force remains to be done, according to the report. Four labor categories don't have enough women, including technicians, protective-services and skilled-craft workers, and service and maintenance employees.
Corroon said 75 percent of all department heads and Cabinet members are female. And women account for 33 percent of all the top executives in the county. But Corroon says he didn't hire so many women just to boost numbers in affirmative-action reports.
"My decision to appoint women to the highest positions in the county was not based on preconceived notions," Corroon said. "I had long before decided to name the most qualified candidates to these important leadership positions."
Councilman Joe Hatch said that although he was upset at the current condition of diversity in the county ranks, he realized that it's been little more than a year since the goals were made, and he praised Corroon's efforts. "We have the best mayor we possibly could to implement this program."
E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com