A plan to privatize the city's recycling services could cost the city money as well as hurt minority contractors, according to an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times. Checking up on claims by Laborers Union Local 1001, which is set to lose jobs thanks to the plan drafted by the Daley administration, the paper checked bid documents and found the union's argument that the private contracts would hurt minority contractors by giving them a lower percentage of the deal when compared to other city contracts to be valid. The union also argues that the city could lose $3 million or more in annual revenues from the sale of city recyclables.
The private recycling contracts are with Waste Management, Metal Management, and Brackenbox. The union filed a competing bid after the Daley deal was made, which automatically put the former Mayor's plan on hold. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has inherited the contract deal and says he has yet to decide on whether to move forward with it, while an arbitrator's ruling is set to come down later this week.
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Why do race or ethnicity need to be considered at all in deciding who gets awarded a contract? It's good to make sure contracting programs are open to all, that bidding opportunities are widely publicized beforehand, and that no one gets discriminated against because of skin color or national origin. But that means no preferences because of skin color or what country your ancestors came from either--whether it's labeled a "set-aside," a "quota," or a "goal," since they all end up amounting to the same thing. Such discrimination is unfair and divisive; it breeds corruption and otherwise costs the taxpayers money to award a contract to someone other than the lowest bidder; and it's almost always illegal—indeed, unconstitutional—to boot (see 42 U.S.C. section 1981 and this model brief: http://www.pacificlegal.org/page.aspx?pid=1342 ). Those who insist on engaging in such discrimination deserve to be sued, and they will lose (as, indeed, the city has in the past).
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