Pittsburgh Regional Transit denies racial bias in worker discipline, pushes minority hiring

Pittsburgh Regional Transit has fired more Black employees in the past two years because of a change in hiring policy, but the agency doesn’t believe it has a long-term problem of issuing more disciplinary notices and terminations to Black employees.

In an interview last week, Chief Human Resources Officer Inez Colon and her deputy, Eric Wells, responded to allegations last month by a group of current and former employees who claim there is a “toxic” work environment for minorities at the agency. The Coalition of Concerned Transit Workers claims that over the past 10 years the agency has fired a disproportionate share of Black workers — union and management — and issued harsher punishment for minorities who face the same allegations as white employees.

“I would disagree with that,” said Colon.

“I’m not aware of a problem going back 10 years,” said Wells, noting that the agency generally provides management employees with many of the same protections for progressive discipline that cover union workers.

Without discussing specific cases, Colon and Wells said they believe terminations and discipline cases have been handled fairly and without racial bias.

“We don’t use race … as a factor in discipline or termination,” Wells said.

New hiring procedure

In the past two years, Colon said, the transit industry’s difficulty hiring new employees has resulted in PRT seeing an increase in terminations for new minority workers. That’s because in November 2022 PRT, like many other transit agencies cross the country, suspended a pre-hiring screening test designed to weed out potential hires who didn’t have the aptitude for dealing with the public in a stressful situation.

Two factors played a role in that, Colon said: a mandate from CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman to hire a more diverse staff and the need to maintain service by replacing employees as quickly as possible after they retired or were fired for refusing to be vaccinated during the pandemic.

At PRT, that resulted in the agency canceling more trips than any time in recent memory because it didn’t have drivers to fill shifts. The frenzy to hire new drivers led to suspending the pre-screening test and higher-than-normal terminations when some of those drivers didn’t work out.

“Given that we were all facing the same problem [hiring new employees], management elected to drop that [pre-hiring aptitude] test,” Colon said. “We knew when we suspended the test we would be terminating more people. With more minorities being hired, we knew that would mean more being terminated.”

Colon released figures that show 62% of 99 employees fired since November 2022 have been minorities, 56 of them Black. Overall, the agency’s staff of 2,626 includes 61% white and 39% minorities (37% Black).

Since pre-screening was suspended, 54% of the 794 new hires have been minorities. About 33% of staff promotions have been minorities.

Colon noted that is well above the county’s 19% minority population.

Chaz Williams, a fired driver and chairman of the workers’ coalition, said he accepts that eliminating pre-screening has led to more terminations the past two years. But he said the agency has its head in the sand if it doesn’t believe it has a long-term history of using a heavier hand to discipline minority workers.

“I saw it in the four years I was there,” said Williams, who was fired as a driver in May 2021. “It is way out of balance.”

Williams said he has had a preliminary meeting with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and intends to file a complaint against PRT. The coalition has 50 to 60 members, current and former employees whose firsthand experience has given them similar concerns, he said.

Rebuilding staff

Overall, Colon and Wells said the agency is continuing its hiring push and expects to identify a new pre-hiring test early next year. The test then will be submitted to an outside agency for certification that it doesn’t discriminate against any group of people before the agency begins using it by the end of next year, Colon said.

Colon said she will recommend that applicants who fail the new test be allowed to reapply within six months instead of the current policy of waiting a year.

The agency is starting a new class for 45 drivers in the next few weeks. It is using incentives such as providing vacation and sick time in the first year. It also is helping employees find affordable daycare, providing free legal and financial advice and offering other incentives to entice new employees.

That includes offering non-management employees a $1,500 bonus if they refer successful new hires for bus driving or maintenance jobs.

The agency pays among the highest wages in the country — some drivers with overtime make more than $150,000 a year — and unions have negotiated a strong benefits package. Still, hiring has been difficult because new employees get schedules that include weekend and evening work and dealing with the public can be difficult.

That makes the job unattractive to younger employees, Colon said. The average age of new hires was 39 in 2023 and 42 in 2024, when most of them were student drivers.

The older pool of candidates means they come with more health problems, particularly sleep apnea and high blood pressure, which make them ineligible until they get treatment and pass medical clearance.

Colon said her staff is “working double-time” to meet hiring needs.

“It’s not perfect, but we’re moving as fast as we possibly can,” Colon said. “We’re trying to arm them with better training. We think it’s an employment option that can offer you a good life.”