Mayor Cherelle Parker wants to diversify the city’s workforce, and she thinks some civil service rules get in the way

27/02/2024

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Philadelphia city council president Kenyatta Johnson (left) are in the audience before Gov. Josh Shapiro delivered his second budget address this month in Harrisburg.

Hours after her inauguration last month, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker began the process of eliminating college degree requirements for some city jobs.

At first glance, her executive order seemed like a trivial move for the first day of a new administration. But it was the start of a much bigger plan by Parker to diversify the municipal workforce by reshaping the way the city hires and promotes its workers.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker signs executive orders on Jan. 2, following her inauguration ceremony. She signed an order about city hiring.

Reforming civil service rules and personnel practices has been a passion project for Parker going back to her days as a member of City Council, where she pushed through changes to the residency requirement for city employees and to the process for evaluating job applicants.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker at news conference last month. She is seeking to change hiring practices for city employees to help diversify the workforce.

Cherelle Parker signs order aimed at removing college degree requirements for some city jobs

Parker has not shared a timeline for when major changes to city personnel practices may take effect. But she has indicated it will be a focus of her administration.

Here’s what you need to know about Parker’s plans to change the workforce:

What does Mayor Parker hope to achieve?

Parker says her goal is to ensure the city’s workforce reflects the people of Philadelphia.

City jobs, while not always high-paying, are generally stable and include strong benefits, such as pensions and good health-care plans.

Parker wants to see more Philadelphia natives and more Black and brown families benefit from careers with the city, which she hopes can be a path to the middle class.

“She believes strongly that there’s a lot of people out there that their lived life experience matters and can enable them to do jobs, not just competently, but more than competently,” Parker spokesperson Joe Grace said. “She sees these kind of job opportunities as pathways to lift people up.”

For Parker, that means removing impediments to advancement for people from diverse backgrounds. While 48% of white Philadelphians have bachelor’s degrees, only 18% of Black residents do, making them ineligible to apply for many city jobs.

One of Parker’s ultimate goals, she said last month, is to eliminate written tests from the civil service system. Studies have shown that standardized testing discriminates against nonwhite people, and some Ivy League schools, including Harvard University, have stopped requiring that applicants take exams such as the SATs.

Currently, most civil service jobs in Philadelphia involve written and oral tests, and only the candidates who score highest advance to the final stages of the hiring process.

Many other cities, especially outside the Northeast and Rust Belt, do not heavily rely on standardized testing, said Katie Martin, who leads the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia research and policy initiative. Instead, they put a greater on emphasis on training and experience.

“Philadelphia’s civil sector hiring was more onerous and cumbersome both for candidates and for hiring managers, but there has been some significant changes to make that less so,” Martin said.

What has Parker done before?

Parker in 2021 championed an amendment to the Home Rule Charter that eliminated the “rule of two,” which required city hiring mangers to choose between the two applicants who scored highest on exams.

“It is one thing for an employer to say, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and an entirely different thing for an employer to make real, substantive changes,” Parker said at the time. “For too long, the Rule of Two has held back Black and brown employees, either from obtaining that entry-level job or from getting that promotion.”

Philly voters will decide whether to keep a 1950s anti-corruption rule that some say limits diversity among city workers

Now, the city’s personnel director can tailor job openings to departmental needs and decide how many applicants make the final rounds of consideration.

Her executive order last month tasked Chief Administrative Officer Camille Duchaussee and the Office of Human Resources with compiling a list of civil service job classifications for which degree requirements could be eliminated.

Those changes would then have to be approved by the Civil Service Commission, an independent three-member panel. Under the order, those classifications will be reviewed on a quarterly basis.

Any further reforms that involve amending the Home Rule Charter would require approval from city voters.

Is Philadelphia’s workforce diverse?

On the surface, it may appear like Philly’s city government does not have a diversity problem. As of last month, the city’s workforce of almost 24,000 was about 48% Black, 38% white, 7% Hispanic or Latino, and 4% Asian, according to a city dashboard.

Philly’s population as a whole, meanwhile, is about 40% Black, 37% white, 16% Hispanic or Latino, and 8% Asian, according to the census.

But the problem becomes more pronounced when looking at who gets the best-paying jobs and who succeeds at climbing the ladder.

The average base salary of Black city employees is about $66,000, while white city workers make $83,000 on average, according to the dashboard. While that’s better than in the private sector, where white Philadelphians made more than twice as much on average as Black residents, it’s still a major inequity Parker hopes to address.

Gender diversity remains an issue as well. About 64% of city workers are men, who make up only about 47% of Philly’s population.

There is a smaller gap for gender pay equity, with male city workers making almost $75,000 on average and their female colleagues making $71,000.

What is the origin of Philly’s civil service system?

The current civil service system is largely aimed at fighting the corruption and patronage that had dominated hiring in City Hall in the first half of the 20th century.

It was established with the approval of the Home Rule Charter in the early 1950s and coincided with the death of the city’s GOP machine, which had controlled City Hall for decades. Republican ward leaders and elected officials held sway over a vast majority of city jobs, and they largely made decisions based on who would support the party, not whether they could efficiently provide city services.

Black Philadelphians who were lucky enough to get city jobs — almost always with the approval of their ward leader — were routinely relegated to the lowest-paying positions and excluded from promotions.

Patronage still exists in local government, especially in independent agencies not covered by the civil service system like the Philadelphia Parking Authority and the court system. But the impact of political influence has been significantly diminished for most city jobs thanks to the charter’s strict hiring and promotion rules.

“Philadelphia’s civil service system, despite not really changing since it was founded, provides significant benefits to the city ensuring a professional workforce — people who were hired for these roles and are serving the city,” Martin said.

Parker last month said her planned reforms will not lead to the return of the patronage system. If the city got rid of written exams, for instance, she said it would replace them with evaluations based on other factors such as experience, which is common in other cities.

“Will you have to prove proficiency? Absolutely,” Parker said. “But a standardized test should not be the sole indicator of whether or not you can perform in a particular job here in municipal government.”

What do labor unions say?

The city’s largest union played a critical role in ensuring the adoption of the Home Rule Charter and the creation of Philadelphia’s stringent civil service rules.

But it appears the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Elections District Council 33, which represents blue-collar workers and is majority Black, will not stand in the way of Parker’s attempts to change many of those rules.

Omar Salaam, the union’s acting leader, declined to discuss Parker’s plan in details, citing the union’s internal upheaval following last week’s ouster of president Ernest Garrett. But he indicated he supported her goals of helping more Black and brown workers climb the ladder in city government.

“Philadelphia is a very diverse city. We’re all about diversity,” said Salaam, whose local backed Parker in last year’s mayoral election despite D.C. 33 as a whole backing a different candidate. “We are adamant supporters of Mayor Parker, and we support her long-term plan.”