BC fire fighters again..One step closer to discrimination
Oh I love this. Remember a day or two ago when I mentioned the fire fighters that were thinking of hiring only women and visible minorities but 'white men can still apply'? yeah, looks like they just got the thumbs up from the superiors and now just have to go through the BC human rights commission to get approval for this discrimination to take place. I wonder if this is just a sort of smoke screen rouse put on by the firefighters of BC. Here is how the story plays out. They get yelled at and have a bad reputation for being male chauvanist pigs due to having roughly 95% of their hired help as men. So, to show that they are nice nice they say "yep, gonna hire women and visible minorities because we see the error of our ways and will try to be nice". Then it goes to the BC human rights and they say "are you nuts? that is discrimination, we wont let it pass". So the firefighters then sit back, hire men again as business as usual and say "hey, we tried. The BC human rights commission said no, they are the bad guy, we arent".
I hope that this is the case, because the only other option is that the BC fire fighters want to do discriminational hiring, and the BC human rights will go along with it because it helps out the minorities and women. However, they don't look at the other side that says 'if we help out this group of people by making a policy to help them get hired, then we are hurting this other side of the group". This is new policy is no better than if any organization paid for the training and only hired caucasian men but said "minorities and women can still apply".
I just hope that the BC human rights commission has the common sense to see this dark side of this plan and do the right thing.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070316/firefighters_070316/20070316?hub=Canada
B.C. politicians want more female firefighters
Updated Fri. Mar. 16 2007 11:10 PM ET
Canadian Press
VANCOUVER -- A beleaguered B.C. fire department has been given the thumbs up by politicians to favour women and visible minorities when hiring.
Richmond, B.C., city council has approved a proposal for its fire rescue department to adopt an assisted hiring practice for its next recruitment campaign.
Rather than recruiting new firefighters directly out of training schools, the force wants to pay for women and minorities to attend the programs, said city spokesman Ted Townsend.
Townsend said traditionally the training schools don't produce the ethnicly diverse group of graduates the department wants so it hopes to entice them to attend the program if it pays.
"We know this is going to take time," Townsend said. "But we've seen this kind of integration on other police forces and we know it can work."
Townsend said the city is still accepting applications from everyone and knows it can't fill all the vacancies with women or minorities.
"We are not going to compromise our standards," he said. "There are very rigorous standards that all firefighters have to meet and women and visible minorities will have to meet them as well."
Attracting women and minorities to a force that had its reputation blackened after allegations of sexual harassment two years ago will be a challenge, Townsend acknowledged, but he said the internal review prompted by those allegations led to massive changes within the department designed to make it more accommodating.
Townsend called the assisted hiring practice only one of many steps needed to move the department forward to representing Richmond's increasingly diverse population.
There are only two women and fewer than 10 visible minorities among the 206 firefighters in the Vancouver suburban community.
"That's completely out of whack with our city," Townsend said.
Visible minorities make up 60 per cent of Richmond's population and there's almost an even split between men and women overall.
The department now must gain the approval of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to move forward with the plan.
If approved, the new recruitment campaign will begin in the spring.
I hope that this is the case, because the only other option is that the BC fire fighters want to do discriminational hiring, and the BC human rights will go along with it because it helps out the minorities and women. However, they don't look at the other side that says 'if we help out this group of people by making a policy to help them get hired, then we are hurting this other side of the group". This is new policy is no better than if any organization paid for the training and only hired caucasian men but said "minorities and women can still apply".
I just hope that the BC human rights commission has the common sense to see this dark side of this plan and do the right thing.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070316/firefighters_070316/20070316?hub=Canada
B.C. politicians want more female firefighters
Updated Fri. Mar. 16 2007 11:10 PM ET
Canadian Press
VANCOUVER -- A beleaguered B.C. fire department has been given the thumbs up by politicians to favour women and visible minorities when hiring.
Richmond, B.C., city council has approved a proposal for its fire rescue department to adopt an assisted hiring practice for its next recruitment campaign.
Rather than recruiting new firefighters directly out of training schools, the force wants to pay for women and minorities to attend the programs, said city spokesman Ted Townsend.
Townsend said traditionally the training schools don't produce the ethnicly diverse group of graduates the department wants so it hopes to entice them to attend the program if it pays.
"We know this is going to take time," Townsend said. "But we've seen this kind of integration on other police forces and we know it can work."
Townsend said the city is still accepting applications from everyone and knows it can't fill all the vacancies with women or minorities.
"We are not going to compromise our standards," he said. "There are very rigorous standards that all firefighters have to meet and women and visible minorities will have to meet them as well."
Attracting women and minorities to a force that had its reputation blackened after allegations of sexual harassment two years ago will be a challenge, Townsend acknowledged, but he said the internal review prompted by those allegations led to massive changes within the department designed to make it more accommodating.
Townsend called the assisted hiring practice only one of many steps needed to move the department forward to representing Richmond's increasingly diverse population.
There are only two women and fewer than 10 visible minorities among the 206 firefighters in the Vancouver suburban community.
"That's completely out of whack with our city," Townsend said.
Visible minorities make up 60 per cent of Richmond's population and there's almost an even split between men and women overall.
The department now must gain the approval of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to move forward with the plan.
If approved, the new recruitment campaign will begin in the spring.
Labels: discrimination
posted by Capt_Canuck at 7:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home