Post Office’s Recruitment of Latinos Under Review

The Postal Service’s efforts to recruit Latino workers in major cities have been “disappointing,” hampered by a large number of Latinos ineligible for federal employment, according to a draft of an internal study obtained by the Washington Post.

Almost one-third of the Latino workers in the civilian labor force in Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago are ineligible for postal employment because of poor English language skills, immigrant status or failure to have registered with the Selective Service, according to Aguirre International of San Mateo, Calif. It found 20% of the Latinos in the San Diego labor force were also ineligible to compete for postal jobs.

The $225,000 consultants’ report was prompted by charges from Tirso del Junco, chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, that the agency was discriminating against Latinos in major cities to the benefit of African Americans. The chairman has said repeatedly that blacks hold a disproportionately large percentage of postal jobs in major cities.

But the report, which was given to the agency in December, has not quelled the issue. After del Junco recently renewed his charges that Latinos were being subjected to discrimination at the Postal Service, the postal governors voted in October for an expanded study of minority hiring, promotions and contracting throughout the agency.

Because the Postal Service is the federal government’s largest civilian employer, the issue of minority employment there has major implications for the executive branch. The Postal Service prides itself on being one of the first federal agencies to open its doors to minorities, and some black postal officials have expressed concern that del Junco’s charges might stir racial tensions within the postal work force.

The Aguirre study was authorized in 1994 shortly after del Junco, then the board’s vice chairman, voiced his concerns at a Washington board meeting. Some of del Junco’s allegations were confirmed by the consultants.

For example, Aguirre found that the Postal Service had made little progress recruiting Latinos in the four cities that supposedly were targeted for Latino hiring. The agency’s recruiting efforts “lacked overall coordination and leadership,” were “characterized by inconsistencies in messages, strategies and execution” and poor relations by postal officials with Latino communities, the consultants told the agency.

“Tense USPS employee relations between Latinos and African Americans in some cities appear to have created additional obstacles toward effective Latino recruitment,” their report said. In an addendum to the report early this year, Aguirre said the study “found no indication of intentional discrimination against Latinos at any of the sites.”

The consultants recommended that the Postal Service begin a “targeted, coordinated public relations campaign” aimed at Latinos, something that agency spokesman Roy Betts said it has begun by appointing 31 Latino recruiters around the country.