By Jane M. Von Bergen
Inquirer Staff Writer

Diversity-inclusion programs that only pretend to bring minorities into building-trades jobs angered early witnesses at a public hearing yesterday.

"What do you want us to do? Pay our union dues with a [welfare] Access card?" said Shenecqua Butt, an African American union carpenter who said she had had to turn to welfare because she had been able to get only a handful of day jobs in the last year and a half.

Butt was one of six union members to testify at the first public hearing of the Mayor's Advisory Commission on Construction Industry Diversity held yesterday at City Hall.

Also scheduled to testify were city officials and contractors, including minority contractors.

Five of the six union members were minority members who talked about the barriers encountered by African Americans, Latinos and women in the trades.

READ MORE: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20080626_Talk_
of_barriers_in_trades_at_diversity_hearing.html

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