Overlooked workers are finding it easier to land jobs
By Katie Johnston GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 06, 2018
The lunch rush was just beginning at Shake Shack on Newbury Street and the all-American tasks of grilling burgers and making milkshakes were being handled by a crew made up almost entirely of immigrants — from Haiti, Senegal, Morocco, El Salvador, and Ethiopia. But these weren’t just people who happened to apply for a job: All of them were actively recruited by the restaurant chain, including those who spoke little English — a marked difference from years past, when only workers with strong English skills made the cut.
Like other employers struggling to fill jobs in a tight labor market, Shake Shack has started seeking out candidates it might not have considered before. Spaulding Rehabilitation Network is opening the door to those with criminal backgrounds, in partnership with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department. CVS is bumping up its efforts to attract workers with disabilities, while other employers are lowering experience and education requirements.
Many of these jobs are minimum-wage, entry-level positions, but they are bringing in people long relegated to the sidelines.
As Northeastern University economist Alicia Sasser Modestino puts it: “We have gone through all the easy-to-employ people, and we’re down to the hard-to-employ people.”
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https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/01/06/tight-labor-market-employers-seek-out-overlooked-workers/yoo8LzrL9Bi4AaKMvlvL4K/story.html
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These people are/were "hard to employ" only or mostly through biases placed on them by the business community which labeled them as such to exercise discrimination covertly.
