In what could be an early test of Speaker Christine Quinn’s stewardship of the City Council, several members of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus are urging her to hire more people of color in an effort to make the council staff more representative of its members.

The call for increased diversity comes as Ms. Quinn embarks on a major restructuring of the council staff. Last Friday, her office dismissed 61 employees, or about 22% of the central staff. Although many council members expected the speaker to make staffing changes, the scope and timing of the move caught some off-guard.

The caucus called an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the dismissals. According to those present, some caucus members expressed concern that a disproportionate number of the staffers fired were people of color.

“We were concerned about the number of staff, and the number of staff that were people of color,” the co-chairman of the caucus, Council Member Robert Jackson, said. Of the 61 staffers fired, 28, or 46%, were of color, a spokeswoman for the speaker, Maria Alvarado, said.

Several members said the caucus had received a commitment from Ms. Quinn that the percentage of people of color among the council’s central staff would increase. Before last week’s dismissals, the percentage was 43%. The caucus wants that number to reflect its percentage of the council’s elected members. Currently, 25 of the body’s 51 members are people of color.

“She’s committed to us that in the long run, when the hiring is done, that it would be higher than what it is,” Mr. Jackson said.

As Ms. Quinn prepares to fill the vacancies, the caucus will be watching closely, members said.

“We are going to be watching carefully to ensure that there is equity across the board,” a council member of Manhattan, Inez Dickens, said. “Because that is the concern.”

Leaders of the caucus said they plan to discuss the issues raised in yesterday’s meeting with Ms. Quinn on Monday. In interviews yesterday, members said that while they were concerned about the hiring process, they trust the speaker to keep her commitment to hire a more diverse and representative staff.

“We are confident that she will,” the co-chairman of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus, Council Member Hiram Monserrate, said.

Ms. Alvarado said the speaker wants to move in the “same direction” and “achieve that same goal” as the caucus. “The speaker is wholly committed to hiring a staff that is diverse and inclusive and representative,” Ms. Alvarado said. She said the speaker did not have a specific percentage in mind, and that even the total number of people that would be hired is unclear.

Members of the caucus said they were encouraged by Ms. Quinn’s early hires to her senior staff. Of the four deputy chiefs of staff the speaker has hired, three are people of color. Members said that was an improvement over the previous speaker, Gifford Miller, in whose office only one of three chiefs of staff was a person of color.

Those appointments reflected what Mr. Jackson said would be an emphasis of the caucus going forward. “We want to see people of color that are at executive staff and director level positions,” he said.

At yesterday’s caucus meeting, some members also expressed dismay over the handling of last week’s staffing changes by the speaker’s office. Terminated employees were given no advance notice and were told to leave by the end of the day. They were locked out of their computers almost immediately.

“There was disagreement about whether it was done in the most appropriate way,” a council member of the Bronx, Maria del Carmen Arroyo, said.

Some caucus members, however, defended Ms. Quinn’s handling of the situation, saying she has a right to bring in her own people as she begins her tenure as speaker. They also noted there was no easy way to fire employees. Mr. Jackson acknowledged that “some people felt there needs to be more sensitivity.” Later, he added, “You don’t want to have people hanging around for two weeks,” referring to the decision to make the terminations effective immediately.

The mass firing was not unprecedented. Shortly after taking office in 2002, Mr. Miller dismissed dozens of longtime council employees on Valentine’s Day.