A regional compact that enlists unions to diversify the construction workforce could be under threat from the Trump administration, and Portland City Council has stepped in to defend it.
The compact — known as the Regional Workforce Equity Agreement — commits Metro, Multnomah County, and the City of Portland to use union labor on public construction projects. In return the signatory construction unions commit to use their hiring halls — and their successful track record of outreach and recruiting — to help the local governments meet their goals of expanding job opportunities for women and minority workers. The agreement took three years to negotiate between the three local governments, the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council, and Regional Council of Carpenters. It was signed in 2022 by 16 local construction unions, and it’s up for renewal in 2026.
But on Jan. 21, 2025 — Day One of his new administration — President Donald Trump issued an executive order pledging to end all race- and sex-based preferences, enforce longstanding civil-rights laws, terminate all federal programs and mandates on “diversity” and “equity,” and revoke previous executive orders going as far back as 1965 that promoted workforce diversity or “affirmative action.”
To understand Trump’s executive order, it helps to know some history. Employment discrimination based on race and sex was once standard practice in the United States, but it became illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Soon after, federal courts interpreted the law to allow limited exceptions for race and sex preference programs that were intended as a remedy for past discrimination. But over the years, the courts have repeatedly narrowed those exceptions, barring outright quotas while continuing to allow some preferences where a disparity could be shown. Under the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, those preference programs have expanded in recent years.
The Trump order seeks to roll back preference programs and enforce a strict literal interpretation of civil rights laws. Since his order, federal grant programs have moved to require all recipients to certify that they will comply with federal anti-discrimination laws as interpreted by the federal judiciary.
That’s why the Portland preference programs are coming under threat. The City of Portland has more than $349 million in active federal grants that could be at risk if the Trump administration determines that City programs are discriminatory.
In order to safeguard federal funding for housing, transportation, and public safety, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson issued his own executive order July 31 directing all city programs to comply with federal civil rights laws — providing services without preference based on race, sex, or other protected statuses. City attorneys identified as many as 75 programs and policies that may need to be adjusted to comply. One of them is likely the city’s longstanding effort to promote women and minorities as construction contractors and workers.
At the beginning of October, the city notified contractors that it would pause enforcement of the Regional Workforce Equity Agreement “to the extent they provide for a race- or gender-based preference.” That’s according to an email to City Council from chief procurement officer Sylvester Donelson, Jr.
But city officials have a plan to bring the preferences back. Mayor Wilson’s executive order also directs the city administrator to “[undertake] disparity studies as appropriate to identify historical discriminatory actions taken by the City that continue to need remedy and repair.”
Again, context is helpful. Disparity studies are a legal means to protect state and local governments in case they’re sued over programs that give preference on the basis of race and sex; if a study can document a race or sex disparity, that’s assumed to have been the result of discrimination, and the study can help a preference program survive legal challenge. Disparity studies date back at least as far as a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case, City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Company. Richmond, Virginia, had required that prime construction contractors set aside 30% of their subcontracting dollars for firms that were at least 51% minority-owned, but the court ruled that the city couldn’t apply a remedy to a harm that it had not demonstrated.
Portland has conducted disparity studies in the past but it hasn’t done one since 2009. Would a study showing disparity 15 years ago stand up in court as justification for a preference program today? City leaders don’t appear to think so. In 2022, Portland City Council approved a new study, but never voted funding for it.
So on Oct. 22, Portland City Councilor Loretta Smith brought a resolution to City Council asking the city administrator to hire a consultant to conduct studies to evaluate disparities in contracting and workforce participation.
– Laurie Wimmer, executive secretary-treasurer, Northwest Oregon Labor Council
Laurie Wimmer and Randall Friesen — the top officers of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council and Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council — testified in support of the resolution, but also pushed for the studies to look at the impact of the Regional Workforce Equity Agreement itself.
Friesen and other labor leaders also questioned the price tag of the studies and why Smith was naming a specific consultant, Keen Independent Research. Smith had put forward a figure of $450,000.
That figure was actually Smith’s attempt at bargain hunting, she told the Labor Press afterward. Disparity studies aren’t cheap. According to a 2021 briefing on the subject by the Harvard Kennedy School, they typically cost around $1 million. Prosper Portland — the city agency that uses public dollars to subsidize private development — had already awarded a contract for $334,495 for a disparity study that’s already under way. Smith’s idea was to piggyback on that study. The $450,000 figure came from a conversation city procurement director Sylvester Donelson, Jr., had with Keen.
Much more than previous Portland city councils, this council seemed eager to incorporate the suggestions from organized labor, and passed amendments by Mitch Green and Dan Ryan to ensure the studies will gather data that would show whether the Regional Workforce Equity Agreement has been effective.
On Nov. 20, City Council approved $450,000 in funding for the study as part of its fall budget adjustment process.
