Yale-New Haven’s long-stalled $430 million proposed cancer center will now race ahead to a ground-breaking within six months and a union election among the hospital’s blue-collar workers could take place nine months later, thanks to an agreement announced by Mayor John DeStefano (at right) and hospital chief Marna Borgstrom (left) at a jubilant City Hall ceremony Wednesday evening.
Labor, hospital, and political activists crammed the second-floor City Hall atrium for a hug- and whoop-filled press conference announcing a deal that culminated an almost around-the-clock, two-day negotiating bender.
“Marna,” DeStefano joked about his newfound ally, “has not pulled an all-nighter since college.”
All the recriminations on all three sides — the city, the unions, the hospital — evaporated like a puddle in the mid-summer sun Wednesday.
“This is a win-win-win,” DeStefano declared.
(Click here and here and here for background on the dispute.)
Under the deal, the city is pledged to rush along approval of the state-of-the-art cancer center by July 1. At that point, an agreement kicks in between the hospital and District 1199/SEIU for the rules of the union’s blue-collar organizing drive.
Both sides gave in on a central point. Organizers from SEIU/District 1199 agreed to a secret-ballot election. The hospital agreed to a jointly selected arbitrator to settle disputes about how the drive is conducted. The agreement lasts nine months, at which point there would presumably come the election.
The deal paved the way for the DeStefano administration and its allies on the Board of Aldermen to pledge to speed approval of the cancer center, which has been stalled for a year.
The timing was fortuitous in two ways: The deal was announced an hour before the Board of Aldermen was commencing the approval process for the cancer center. It came as the Democratic Party statewide is choosing delegates to a nominating convention for governor, a campaign in which DeStefano, one of the candidates, has been taking heat for the cancer center impasse. Just this past week the hospital mailed flyers to delegates statewide to put the heat on DeStefano.
DeStefano said all sides set this date as the goal for an agreement “five or six weeks ago.” He, Hospital President Borgstrom, Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander, and SEIU Secretary-Treasurer David Pickus (pictured) began the final round of negotiations in the mayor’s office Monday morning. They broke Monday night, resumed Tuesday morning, and kept going until 3:45 a.m. Wednesday. They agreed on the broad outlines of the deal then; later in the day the fine print was finalized.
The deal includes landmark promises from the hospital to the community, including a promise to hire 100 New Haveners a year, many from the surrounding Hill, Dwight and West River neighborhoods; to establish a citizens’ “advisory committee” to monitor Yale-New Haven’s free care policies; to invest at least $100,000 a year for five years in a “career ladder program” for local people; make a voluntary tax payment to the city the way other major not-for-profits have agreed to do; make 12 traffic-signal improvements in the area around the cancer center; and contribute $100,000 a year for five years to the Mayor’s Youth Initiative.
In other words, the hospital agreed to a “community benefits agreement” that activists from the labor-affiliated community group CORD had been demanding.
Click here to read a City hall release that summarizes highlights of the deal and lists the timetable for upcoming public approvals.
“Yale-New Haven sat down with a community group they don’t control and they struck a deal,” crowed Rev. Henry Morris (pictured) of CORD. “That’s never happened before.” He predicted the community benefits deal would set a precedent for all major future development in the city.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Borgstrom was asked whom she will vote for in the gubernatorial election. She smiled, and didn’t answer.
In other words, the hospital agreed to a ââÅcommunity benefits agreementââ? that activists from the labor-affiliated community group CORD had been demanding.
An alternate version of that reality: in other words, they gave in to the extortion for money demanded by everyone with their hand out. But either way you look at it, Yale-New Haven has placed a generous offer on the table that will satisfy any reasonable group involved.
The jobs program is a fantastic idea! It's one of the best concepts I've seen coming from the city and/or Yale in a long time. Someone has got to address the gap between the type of skilled jobs that the center will create and the average education and training of much of the local potential workforce.
Yale-New Haven will pay for the traffic signal upgrades in that area that Mayor DeStefano's administration has failed to provide for the city - that's great news in and of itself - perhaps the embarrassment that has passed for "traffic engineering" in that part of the city will finally be fixed. If only it would be fixed everywhere else in the city as well, perhaps both drivers, bikers, and pedestrians would be safer. They're called left turn lanes and signals: use them, please. Can you imagine driving down Howard Avenue and being able to turn left on York Street to get to the hospital main entrance without taking you life into your hands?