Paul Bass Photo
Cozzi with Kyle ZImmer of the operating engineers union.
The first union leaders have spoken in this year’s mayoral race — and thrown their institutional weight behind Henry Fernandez, a former top aide to a man they supported for decades.
Leaders of three local unions — representing carpenters, laborers and engineers — backed Fernandez at a press conference Thursday outside the East Rock Global Magnet School.
Fernandez is one of seven Democrats running in a Sept. 10 party primary for the nomination to succeed retiring 20-year incumbent Mayor John DeStefano.
The union leaders returned to a spot — East Rock School, currently in the finishing phases of a rebuilding project — to which they journeyed in 2011 to endorse DeStefano’s reelection campaign. The building trades unions, whose members have rebuilt 35 New Haven public schools, consistently supported DeStefano’s campaigns throughout his career.
Thursday’s press conference was Fernandez’s second in two days. Since Gary Holder-Winfield’s March 28 “clean elections” event outside City Hall No other candidates in the race has yet held any press conferences — known as “earned media” in the campaign trade, designed to bring public attention to a candidate and his or her issues and support. Thursday’s event gave Fernandez an opportunity to advance a jobs platform as well as demonstrate that he begins the race with organized support.
This week’s press events also highlighted a fine line Fernandez will straddle in the campaign. Fernandez worked with the DeStefano administration as economic development chief and as head of the Livable City Initiative (LCI) neighborhood anti-blight agency before leaving City Hall in 2004. His work at City Hall has translated to backing from groups long supportive of John DeStefano. But he also risks losing votes from New Haveners who have expressed a desire for change after two decades of DeStefano’s rule. So Fernandez can be expected to stress his record in government while also finding ways to demonstrate an independent identity. On Wednesday he held a press conference critical of a decision by the DeStefano administration, to hire a new schools superintendent by Sept. 1. On Thursday he picked up important support from longtime DeStefano allies based on his record in City Hall.
The event wasn’t a formal endorsement by any unions. Rather, leaders of three of the buildings and construction trades unions gathered members to accompany Fernandez as he expressed his support for continuing and expanding on his previous city government role in promoting union work for local people.
Chris Cozzi, who’s 37, was one of the leaders present. He has followed his father and grandfather in the position of business manager for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 478, which he said has 3,000 members in Connecticut, including “several hundred” living in the city of New Haven. The significance of union backing lies not so much in those several hundred votes, but in thousands of combined potential votes from all 18 affiliated trade unions, which have some 4,800 city-based members tend to endorse candidates as a block; and in the political field work the organizations do.
When Cozzi’s father Ben had the position, he worked directly with Fernandez — then the DeStefano administration’s economic development chief — on “project labor agreements” (PLAs) on school construction projects. The PLAs guarantee that 25 percent of the jobs go to New Haveners and 25 percent to people of color.
He and other union leaders referred to Fernandez’s role in helping craft PLAs as a main reason for their support for Fernandez’s mayoral candidacy. They also cited his role in helping launch a pre-apprenticeship “workforce construction initiative” that trains New Haveners for city-backed construction work. (Read about that here.)
“Henry was integral” to developing those two programs, Cozzi said. “We’ll get our members out to vote and make sure our members get their friends and neighbors out to vote.”
Carpenters union organizer Tim Sullivan (pictured with Fernandez) said DeStefano “had a great record with us.” He said he sees Fernandez as someone who will continue those policies but also will be “a different kind of guy. What we see with Henry is the opportunity to generate union jobs in the private sector,” as well.
Fernandez talked about that in remarks to the two dozen or so sign-bearing union supporters gathered on Nash Street outside the school. He said he would work as mayor to convince private developers to follow the city’s lead in hiring union labor along with benchmarks for local and minority hiring. He also emphasized training programs.
“Let’s be honest,” Fernandez said. “It’s not enough that New Haven residents get to work on one construction job. This is not about a job. It’s about a career. It’s about the ability to get good-paying jobs” with health and retirement benefits. “We only see that in construction when it’s union jobs.”
He spoke of a time when he served in City Hall and “we made a decision to shut down” work on school projects in which subcontractors “thought it was OK to sneak in workers from out of state who didn’t look like us.”
He praised the construction unions for consistently exceeding the minimum 25 percent local and minority and female hiring thresholds under the subsequent PLAs.
Labor unions traditionally play a major role in turning out votes in local elections. Mayor DeStefano enjoyed near-unanimous support from local unions over his career. The one exception came two years ago, when Yale’s locals — the largest and most politically influential in town — broke with him. They didn’t back his opponents. But they worked hard to help defeat City Hall-backed aldermanic candidates and elect a new supermajority to the Board of Aldermen.
Those locals are now joining other New Haven unions in interviewing all the Democratic candidates. Another candidate, state Sen. Toni Harp, is considered the favorite to win at least the coveted Yale unions’ support, but that decision has not been made; candidate Kermit Carolina, the principal of Hillhouse High School, also enjoys support among the union rank and file.
“Every union will probably make an individual decision. I don’t think it will be a unilateral decision,” predicted Democratic Town Chairwoman Jackie James. “Everyone will make their own decision based on what they feel their relationship is with the candidate.”
Ernest Pagan of the Local 24 of the Carpenters Union, pictured holding aloft a Fernandez campaign sign at the event, said he hasn’t made his own decision yet. Pagan, who’s 33, grew up in the Rockview projects; he did framing and sheetrocking work on the new East Rock Global building.
“I’ve got to listen to all the candidates,” Pagan said. “I’m here doing my research.”
Okay, NOW you can call him DeStefano 2.0.
Did these union heads even meet with the other candidates?
Or do they already either know which side their bread is buttered on?
One City, for sale to the highest bidder.