Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240120
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE MAYOR WANTS MORE WOMEN IN CITY JOBS
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers put it directly to City Manager Bob Herbert: He wants city officials to step up efforts to recruit and promote women for municipal jobs.Especially in the 245-member Fire Department, which has no women firefighters.
"Don't bring us another affirmative-action report without hiring a woman firefighter," Bowers told Herbert this week.
While the racial composition of the city work force has received the most public attention in recent years, Bowers said he is concerned about the slow progress in hiring and promoting women.
Bowers said women make up about 50 percent of the labor force in the metropolitan area. But they comprise only 29.5 percent of the municipal employees, and received only 21 percent of the city-employee promotions in the past year. Thirty-eight percent of the city employees hired in the past 12 months are women.
Herbert said the city has found it difficult to hire female firefighters because there are so many applicants. And the turnover rate is so small - less than 3 percent.
The city has a waiting list of 115 applicants who have passed the physical and written tests to become firefighters. The applicants are ranked on the basis of their test scores.
Whenever there is a vacancy, the position is filled from among the top six applicants. After the post is filled, the seventh-ranked applicant then is moved up the list to be considered for the next vacancy, and everyone else moves up.
Fire Chief Rawleigh Quarles said there are two female applicants on the waiting list, but they are ranked low. Under the current system, city officials can't arbitrarily move an applicant up the list.
The city establishes a new waiting list each year by retesting the applicants and making a new ranking. This gives applicants who have applied since the last list was established the chance to be placed near the top of the list.
The city offered a firefighter job to a woman applicant more than three years ago, Quarles said, but she already had taken a similar position with another locality.
Salem has two female firefighters, and Roanoke County has about 50 women among its volunteer firefighters.
"We are not getting enough women to apply. Not enough women are considering firefighting as a career," said Ken Cronin, Roanoke's personnel manager. "It's hard to get women interested."
But the city has developed an aggressive recruitment program that it hopes will persuade more women to apply for firefighter jobs.
Quarles said recruiters will visit military bases and colleges to seek women and black applicants for the department.
City officials also are considering the establishment of a cadet program so that 19-year-olds can begin apprenticeships as junior firefighters. Applicants now must be 21 to be hired.
Quarles said he believes the cadet program would enable the city to help interest young people in firefighting as a career.
"By the time they reach 21, many young people have already gone to college or gone into other fields of work and aren't interested in firefighting," Quarles said.
The city's newest fire station on Mecca Street off Orange Avenue has living accommodations for both men and women.
Cronin said nearly two-thirds of all city jobs traditionally have been held by men. They include garbage collection and maintenance workers, laborers, equipment operators and repairmen for utility lines.
Cronin said the nature of the jobs makes it difficult for the city to quickly increase the percentage of female employees.
"We don't have a significant number of women applicants for the jobs that have traditionally been male-oriented," he said.
Black employees now make up 24.1 percent of the city's work force, up from 23.4 percent a year ago, according to the affirmative-action report that was given to council.
The percentage of black workers is almost identical to the percentage of blacks in the city's population - 24 percent according to the 1990 census.
Herbert said that in most job categories, the city's percentage of black employees is equal to or higher than the percent available in the Roanoke metropolitan area.
But the Rev. Charles Green, president of the Roanoke chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the city is moving too slowly in hiring more black workers.
"There are less than 10 percent blacks and there are no blacks in some other departments," Green said.
Black employees tend to be concentrated in maintenance, labor and clerical jobs, Green said, although a few have been hired or promoted to management jobs in recent years.