Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action is a program created by the Federal government in 1964. It is designed to remedy past discrimination in employment and eliminate current and future race and gender discrimination. Affirmative Action at the University of New Mexico promotes race and gender diversity in employment by recruiting qualified women and minorities into the applicant pools.

The University of New Mexico recognizes its responsibility to extend equal employment and educational opportunities to all qualified individuals. This University exists to educate, to conduct research and creative activities, and to perform related services on behalf of the community that supports it. The University of New Mexico has a responsibility to its students and to the citizens of the state to actively recruit and hire the best-qualified persons it can, and to do so in the context of its commitment to affirmative action principles and diversity.

In order to meet the University's commitment to maintain and/or improve workforce diversity, Hiring Officials must show good faith efforts to target recruitment of women and minorities to ensure their representation in the applicant pool regardless of whether the position has a placement goal or not due to underutilization, and to treat all applicants fairly.

 

Affirmative Action Plan

UNM's Affirmative Action Plan is published each year by the Office of Equal Opportunity. The University's data is collected annually from the period of November 1st of the preceding year to October 31st of the current year. Affirmative Action at the University of New Mexico promotes race and gender diversity in employment and recognizes its responsibility to extend equal employment to all qualified individuals.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) requires federal contractors like the University of New Mexico to conduct an assessment of the percentage of females and minorities in its workforce by job groups to the percentage of females and minorities with requisite skills available in the recruitment area. Job groups include job titles with similar content, wage rate, and opportunities. Similar opportunities refer to training, transfers, promotions, pay, mobility, and other career enhancement opportunities offered by the jobs within a job group.

The purpose of the availability is to establish a benchmark against which the demographic composition of the contractor's workforce can be compared in order to identify accomplishments, problem areas and placement goals. This serves as a management tool to ensure equal opportunity.

Affirmative Action Documents

Job Titles/Job Groups

All job titles at UNM are placed job groups with similar EEO Occupational Categories (job families). EEO-6 Categories into which UNM titles are placed include:.

  1. Executive/Administrator
  2. Faculty
  3. Professional
  4. Clerical/Secretarial
  5. Technical/Paraprofessional
  6. Skilled Craft Worker
  7. Service Worker

Underutilization/Placement Goals

A separate report is generated for each job group and the persons in that group are known as incumbents. The job groups are similar to those identified in the census classification system of occupational categories and compared to the recruitment area.

The University's data is from the period of November 1st of the preceding year to October 31st of the current year. The University's Office of Institutional Analytics and Office of Equal Opportunity are responsible for generating the statistical data for assessing the University's accomplishments and problem areas.

The job group availabilities are calculated according to the recruitment area for each job group. Tier I Regular Staff positions are recruited locally and regionally and Tier II Regular Staff positions are recruited locally, regionally, and nationally. Faculty positions are recruited nationally. The percentage of women and minorities available to work in the recruitment area is then compared to the percentage of women and minorities within the organization that are promotable, transferable, and trainable to determine if the University is utilizing women and minorities for each job group. A category is considered underrepresented when the percentage of representation is less than 80% of the weighted availability (two factor analysis).

Underutilization tables

All underutilization tables may be found in the Faculty Underutilization Chart and Staff Underutilization can be found in Appendix I of the AAP.

The Faculty Underutilization Chart shows underutilizations in all categories:

  • Female
  • Minority
  • Asian/Pacific Islander
  • African American
  • Hispanic
  • Native American

The Staff Underutilization Tables are shown in terms of Females and Minorities which is in keeping with the 2000 U.S. Census reporting and can be found in Appendix I of the AAP.