Boston Globe
BOSTON — Inside the Grove Hall firehouse, a group of job seekers got a crash course on landing a coveted job with the Boston Fire Department. They tried on a heavy fire suit, learned how to work an air mask, and were introduced to civil service hiring.
But in the end, mastering those skills would matter little. That is because most in the largely black and Latino group lacked one near-mandatory item on their résumés: military service, a qualification more commonly met by white applicants than minorities.The preference given to veterans is thwarting the hiring of minority firefighters, even as the number of African-Americans in the Fire Department plummets — down by a quarter over the past dozen years. Massachusetts has one of the strongest veterans preference programs in the country, a preference courts have upheld.
“An individual who is not a veteran has a very small chance of getting on the Fire Department,” City Councilor Tito Jackson of Roxbury said.
Full story: Boston Fire Dept.’s veterans’ preference hurts minority hiring