FDNY's Failure To Hire Minorities Could Cost Taxpayers $128 Million In Back Wages

gothamist.com ^ | March 9, 2012 | John Del Signore

[Free ThinkerNY]

A federal judge has ordered the city to pay an estimated $128 million in back wages to minorities who applied to be firefighters with the FDNY, which is still 97 percent white and allegedly racist. Black and Hispanic applicants who took the department’s screening test in 1999 or 2002 and were not selected will be contacted about the settlement, which is intended to "recreate the conditions and relationships that would have been had there been no unlawful discrimination."

An expert witness for the Justice Department, Bernard Siskin, calculated the amount of wages black and Hispanic applicants would have earned had they passed the entrance exam at the same rates as white applicants. The amount to be paid out, however, will be offset against how much the applicants actually earned during the time period they could have been firefighters. But the City Law Department claims that when the final calculations are made, the city will have to pay will be far less than $128 million, and maybe nothing at all.

The ruling comes on the eve of the FDNY's annual testing, which begins next week with a new "racially acceptable" test, as the Daily News puts it. 61,000 applicants will compete for a few thousand positions, and NY1 reports that blacks make up 23 percent of the applicants and another 23 percent are Hispanic.

[Gay State Conservative]

There simply wasn’t a shred of evidence of racial bias demonstrated by the plaintiffs.

As if that's gonna prevent some Federal judge (a "wise Latina",perhaps) from ruling otherwise.

[Catphish]

Of course not. Expect racially biased firefighter exams? Someone please explain this to me. Does anyone really buy that?

[Lancey Howard]

...a good percentage of black physicians with whom I worked seemed,for all the world,to be very talented and fully qualified.However,more than a few didn't seem to be qualified..perhaps a somewhat higher percentage than is found among white physicians. IMO "affirmative action" is very damaging to those black people who *are* qualified to be physicians,lawyers,accountants,cops,etc.

Yep. Who wants to take a chance when their life might be at stake? Not me.
Yet blacks will thank their Democrat masters by continuing to re-elect them. Go figure.

[Lancey Howard]

Of course not. Expect racially biased firefighter exams? Someone please explain this to me. Does anyone really buy that?

Of course not.