New York City’s Fire Department (the FDNY) has always been predominantly white, in fact, up until the mid-nineteen eighties, it was still overwhelmingly Irish and German, in a city that’s becoming increasingly less white. The FDNY remains 93% white in a city that is now only 39% white. In 1991, then Mayor, David Dinkins called it, “The white men’s social club.”
What’s the reason for this lack of ethnic and gender diversity?
Well, lack of recruitment efforts are certainly NOT the reason. The FDNY has had teams of minority recruiters scouring the city for the past two decades and both minorities and women have been targeted at New York’s City University (CUNY) system (now over 60% non-white). In fact, in 1992, applications for that year’s FDNY entrance exam were not available on predominantly white Staten Island until the Borough President of Staten Island complained to the city.
Beyond that, a five point residency bonus has been given to candidates who reside within the five boroughs and the entrance standards have been relaxed over the protests of both Department officials and those, like myself, who came on under more stringent standards. Despite all of this, the number of minorities on the FDNY have not increased appreciably.
Still, the fact remains that entrance standards for the FDNY have always been higher than those of any other city agency, including the police department. In the early eighties while the police department gave a written exam that a local public school teacher proved even NYC Public School third graders could pass, the FDNY still gave one that over 20% of the applicants failed, in short, a more real test. The physical exam for the FDNY has also been notoriously difficult. Up until 1982, a mile run, a fifteen foot ledge walk with a 30 pound Scott Pak and a timed pull-up position bar hang were all a part of the physical - the reason being that upper body strength was (and remains) a huge part of the job.
New York City’s own Equal Employment Practices Commission (EEPC) undertook one of the most extensive audits ever in reviewing the FDNY’s recruiting for its 1999 firefighter exam. A review of the audit’s preliminary findings in May 2000, prompted a meeting between top Fire Department officials and the EEPC (a five member board selected by the Mayor and the City Council) to review fairness in hiring and promotion. The commission, headed by Abraham May expressed its disappointment that its 1994 recommendations, including the implementation of a full time recruiting staff of twenty deployed in every borough and using Fire Marshal’s to check the addresses of candidates applying for the residency bonus.
Mr. May said, “What we found this time is not very different from what we found last time.” In response, Frank Gribbon, a Fire Department spokesman noted that 17 percent of the current hiring list are women and minorities and said that the Department ran “a very aggressive recruiting campaign for the three years before 1999.”
The fact that the FDNY has scrapped a recommended early exam (the EEPC has urged entrance exams every two years) in order to reach more of the minority eligibles further down the current list certainly indicates a desire on the part of the City to increase its ethnic diversity.
THE UGLY NON-ISSUE OF DISPARATE IMPACT:
The EEPC has based its findings on the basic standard used by the federal EEOC – “Disparate Impact.” Many proponents of race and gender based preferences have expressed skepticism at the timing of this report, claiming that it’s a “backdoor way” for the Guiliani administration to challenge the federal “four-fifths rule.” The “four-fifths rule” states that a hiring requirement can be judged to have a disparate or adverse impact on minority and female candidates if the passing rate for either of those groups is less than 80 percent of the rate for the most successful group. The Ashcroft Justice Department is on record as being against this bizarre standard.
In fact, the EEPC’s major complaints about the FDNY entrance requirements all center around the disparate impact defined in the “four-fifths rule.” Even the recent watered down test, passed by 91.6 percent of the white applicants (ridiculously high), has had a disparate impact (according to the four-fifths rule) for both blacks (61% passed) and women (69.5% passed) – no one has yet been able to explain the reasons for these disparities. The fact that the same test was given to every applicant should make the process, by definition, “fair.” If anything, the fact that over 90 percent of the white male applicants passed the exam indicates the need for a more stringent exam. No group should have more than 70 percent of its applicants pass a real exam.
The FDNY’s Vulcan Society (its African-American fraternity) has long claimed that written exams hurt black candidate’s chances of getting a high list number because they generally don’t score as high as white candidates. Sadly, this is a specious argument because the same exam is given to every applicant and everyone has the same opportunity to prepare for the exams – the City offers free prep courses for the written and physical exams as part of its continuing education program.
The recent requirement of 30 college credits upon appointment is viewed as “potentially screening out minority applicants, as they are less likely to afford to attend college.” The fact that over 60% of CUNY’s enrollment is made up of minority students would seem to belie this charge. In fact, when this requirement was introduced under the Dinkins Administration it was done expressly to increase minority recruitment. Besides, the City argues that recent changes in the FDNY’s job description (the inclusion of medical training for CFR-D duties) has made the college credits a necessity.
The third requirement that has been attacked is the CFR-D (Certified First Responder with Defibrillation) requirement. All new recruits must take the CFR-D course at their own expense before being eligible for hiring. The cost of the course (appx $350) is considered a barrier to poor applicants The city initiated this requirement as a cost saving measurement in the mid-nineties when the current Fire Commissioner, Tom Von Essen was President of the Firefighter’s Union the UFA (United Firefighters Association). When the FDNY and New York City’s Emergency medical Services (EMS) were merged, firefighters were given 96 hours of CFR-D training by the city, often on overtime. The city claims it saves millions of dollars with the CFR-D requirement. The UFA has opposed this requirement since its inception for the economic interests of its membership.
The basic problem confronting both the FDNY’s recruiting efforts and the existing EEOC guidelines is the Department’s entrance standards. If, as the Vulcan society argues, “blacks generally don’t score as high whites on written exams,” the numbers certainly bare this out (91.6% of whites versus 61% of blacks passing the written exam) than the argument comes down to the viablity of existing standards. In short, should blacks (on the written) and women (on the physical) be held to the same standards as white males? If the answer is yes, then we’ll just have to live with the resulting “disparate impact,” if not, we must be prepared to throw the very idea of “equality before the law” out the window.
This is why now may be the best time for the FDNY to challenge the “four-fifths rule” in court. With a strongly anti-preference Supreme Court and a friendly Justice Department, there may never be a better time to challenge the fatally flawed parameter of “disparate impact,” the foundation of all existing race & gender preferences.
lgl