Employment Equity Division
(Formerly known as One Minneapolis)
Overview
The Employment Equity Division was created out of an unsettling fact that stemmed from a report issued by the Economic Policy Institute in 2010. The report ranked Minneapolis #1 in the nation for having the worst unemployment disparity between whites and blacks. In response, the City of Minneapolis, along with The Advocates of Human Rights and the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center, held a conference on December 2, 2011 called One Minneapolis: A Call to Action to discuss racial disparities in employment, housing, education, crime and justice, and small business entrepreneurship.
A template was created to outline solutions to increase racial equity in Minneapolis. To continue the momentum from the conference, the Department of Civil Rights appointed Karen Francois, the Director of Employment Equity, in January 2012.
In August 2012, the Minneapolis City Council approved a resolution called 2012R-456: Supporting Equity in Employment in Minneapolis and the Region. The resolution directed the City to:
- Develop and implement an Equity Assessment Toolkit to inform City budget, policy and program decisions, including the annual City budget, hiring, retention, employee training, promotion, contracting and purchasing.
- Assess and implement, where appropriate, the recommendations of the Equity in Employment Task Force.
- Recommend fair hiring provisions to be added to the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances.
- Provide a report on the development of the Equity Assessment Toolkit and implementation of Task Force recommendations to the Public Safety, Civil Rights and Health committee on or before October 24, 2012.
What Do We Do?
The Employment Equity Division functions around the following goals:
- Leverage public and private partnerships and resources towards increasing racial equity.
- Operate within a regional collaboration called Everybody In, which consist of public and private sector members working together to eliminate racial employment disparities.
- Develop and manage a youth internship and leadership development program that creates a pipeline of qualified and experienced entry-level professionals for the public sector.
- Manage an initiative that advances digital equity and financial literacy for minorities.
- Create an Equity Assessment Toolkit that is used for hiring, procurement, community engagement and policy making decisions for the purpose of preventing institutional racism and identifying new options to remedy long-standing inequities.
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Last updated Apr. 19, 2013