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The fourth annual Construction Inclusion Weeka base event designed by industry leaders to combat workplace hate, kicks off on Monday, October 14 amid a renewed push to attract workers from diverse backgrounds into the sector.
With 41% of the current construction workforce planning to retire by 2031, creating an inclusive environment is essential to meet growing demand for construction, architecture and engineering jobs, according to a CIW statement.
“To continue to deliver on our promises to build the infrastructure and spaces our communities need, we must also deliver on our promise to provide an inclusive and welcoming workplace for the industry,” said Ray Sedey, CEO of St. Louis, Missouri. McCarthy Building Cos., and president of CIW 2024, in the release.
A pre-election strike
The week unfolds as bias-motivated actions, which can include racist or sexist graffiti in bathrooms, displays of ribbons in workplaces or hazing of workers, among other exclusionary practices, have recently been activated on sites of work
Turner Construction, the industry’s largest company by annual revenue, walks and monitors its projects daily for signs of hate. With 120,000 workers on their sites, their data provides a snapshot of what’s happening in the industry.
After declining earlier this year, bias-motivated incidents, primarily bathroom graffiti, rose slightly this summer, according to Turner spokesman Chris McFadden. McFadden said the increase follows a trend the company has noticed in previous presidential election years.
“Tensions rise and people find reasons to disagree,” he said. “I have not seen anything political in ours [daily] reports, but there is only an increase in distress.”
Break from the workplace
On October 8, a Gilbane-Turner JV shut down work on the Buffalo Bills’ new $1.4 billion stadium in Orchard Park, New York, after a worker discovered a rope tied in a way that could have perceived as a noose, McFadden said.
Further investigation by the JV determined that it was actually a bowline knot, a common slip knot used for lifting loads, where the excess line had been wrapped around the rope to keep it out of the road
McFadden said even though the discovery was determined not to be a bias-motivated event, closing down the job and talking to workers to make sure everyone felt welcome on site was worth the work stoppage. “That was the right thing to do,” McFadden said.
Indeed, after picking up in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020, data from both Turner and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission show a drop and then a flattening of such events in recent years.
Reports of suspected bias-motivated events at Turner workplaces
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # of reports | 80 | 88 | 42 | 45 | 29 |
| Monthly average | 13.3 | 7.3 | 3.5 | 3.8 | 3.2 |
SOURCE: Turner Construction. Note: 2020 events run from July to December. 2024 totals are through September 30.
Reports of ties to US workplaces
| Fiscal year | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # of charges | 8 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 15 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
SOURCE: Construction Dive analysis of data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
DEI is under fire
While the construction industry can view these trends as positive, it may encounter more challenges in the future.
following the The 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned affirmative action higher education admissions policies, a broader backlash has emerged against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across sectors.
In construction, this backlash has taken the form of several challenges to workforce diversity goals on federal projects. For example, a federal judge partially blocked the Department of Transportation’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which has an aspirational goal of 10 percent of federal dollars going to minority- and women-owned businesses. In the September ruling, the judge said the program was likely unconstitutional.
This decision was followed by a similar one sentence in the 8a program of the Small Business Administrationwhich has comparable goals. Additionally, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, 13 state attorneys general sent a letter to Fortune 100 CEOs, warning them that they would examine DEI’s hiring practices as potentially discriminatory.
However, construction companies are preparing on their own initiative to welcome more diverse workers into the industry. “This is how we will continue to attract and retain the best people for the work we do,” Sedey said in the statement.
