HispanicBusiness

Houston -- The federal government is not achieving its goal of increasing racial diversity - particularly the number of Hispanics - within its ranks, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) said in a report released during its national convention here.

Although Hispanics account for 12 percent of the U.S. labor force, they only comprise 6.6 percent of government workers, according to the report issued by LULAC in Houston during its annual conference.

Furthermore, Hispanics account for only 2.5 percent of those in the executive hierarchy, according to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) figures cited in the report.

Other minority groups, however, have a higher representation in government posts than in the labor force.

For example, blacks make up 17 percent of the federal labor force, Asians 4.5 percent and Native Americans 2.2 percent.

The Hispanic community is "the only group that remains underrepresented and it is a shame that the government is not representative" of the U.S. labor force, LULAC president Rick Dovalina said.

The problem has been extant for some time. In 1986, there were 105,191 Hispanics in the federal labor force, and 14 years later that number had risen only slightly to 115,247.

The low representation is symptomatic of a broader problem: the continued lack of institutional attention to a growing part of the U.S. population that by 2005 will be the largest minority group in the United States, according to figures cited in the report provided by the Executive Networking Forum (ENF), which includes Hispanic leaders in government posts.

According to federal regulations, the OPM sets recruiting policies for minorities that should be followed by federal agencies to curb racial disparities in the federal work force.

U.S. President George W. Bush is committed to enforcing an order to increase the Hispanic presence in federal posts, OPM deputy director Daniel Blair said at the conference on Monday.

The order, signed in 2000 by former President Bill Clinton, calls for the creation of an inter-agency working group to implement measures to recruit Hispanics.

The group has been created and it met in October for the first time. It will draft a detailed annual report about its efforts, the number of Hispanics in federal agencies, their job levels and promotions, Blair said.

The LULAC convention ends on Wednesday.

Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castañeda is scheduled to speak at the meeting about ongoing immigration negotiations between Mexico and the United States.