The NAACP supports targeted and local hiring, equitable enterprise provisions, and labor agreements.
1. Local and targeted hiring policies require or incentivize businesses (usually those that receive public funding) to hire from specific geographic areas (local) or from specific populations within the community (targeted). Targeted hiring policies benefit typically underemployed populations such as formerly incarcerated persons.
2. Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Woman Business Enterprise (WBE), and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) provisions help ensure that people of color, women, and socially or economically disadvantaged businesses get a fair opportunity to win contracts. MBEs can be self-identified, but are typically certified by a city, state, or federal agency. Often publicly funded projects set a requirement or goal to source MBEs, WBEs, or DBE as suppliers.
3. Project Labor Agreements (PLA) and community workforce agreements are legally-binding negotiations, typically for large construction and development projects and especially those that involve government funding, in which contractors and labor unions determine wage rates, benefits, and other terms that involve employees working on that project. Similarly, state and city living wage and fair minimum wage policies promote economic security by matching the local cost of living. Bargaining for the Common Good is a process in which unions that have the right to
bargain use contract fights as an opportunity to organize with community partners around a set of demands that benefit not just the bargaining unit, but also the wider community as a whole.
4. Fair chance hiring policies, such as “ban the box,” prevent discrimination on the basis of past criminal convictions. While this is especially relevant to obtaining employment, it can also be applied to housing, schooling, social/government services, etc. Ban the box policies can be passed on the local level through ordinance, resolution, or administrative memorandum and on the state level through executive order or legislative policy.
