Jobs Disappear; What'll Get Them Back?

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Jobs Disappear; What’ll Get Them Back?

by Thomas MacMillan & Paul Bass | Feb 17, 2010 1:00 pm

(31) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Business/Labor/ Economic Development, City Hall, Recession

Thomas MacMillan Photo For 14 months now, Elias White has been looking for a job. Two city officials are pushing two different ideas about how to get thousands of recession-hit people like him back to work.

One approach comes from Mayor John DeStefano. He’s pitching a two-prong plan: Target science/ medical-oriented development projects. And get people ready to work, through school reform and job-training.

The other approach comes from West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson. He introduced a bill to the Board of Aldermen Tuesday night to spend about $4 million on incentives of up to $10,000 for area businesses to hire unemployed people.

The plan—called the Hiring Incentives for Residents Employment (HIRE) program—would set aside the equivalent of one mill of property taxes to pay businesses that hire city residents. Employers would be eligible for an initial grant of $10,000 and a follow-up grant of $5,000 if the resident is still employed at the business after one year.

Click here to read the proposed bill, which is now headed for a joint meeting of the Finance and Legislation Committees.

Both approaches—Goldson’s and DeStefano’s—seek to address job losses the recession has brought to New Haven, as it has across the country. The city’s unemployment rate was 7.9 percent in Dec. 2009. The estimated number of jobs in New Haven dropped from 78,000 to 73,000 just in 2009. DeStefano said Tuesday he expects the drop to continue this year. The latest threat: Shaw’s plans to close its Whalley Avenue supermarket in six weeks if it can’t find a buyer, putting some 100 jobs at risk.

Targeted Growth

Melissa Bailey File Photo A day after his top aides blasted Goldson in a Register news article for introducing the jobs proposal, Mayor DeStefano praised him.

“It’s worth being discussed. It’s useful for people to think about these things. Maybe there’s something I can learn in the discussion,” he said in an interview in his office Tuesday afternoon.

Goldson’s idea works better at the state and federal level than at the municipal level, for two reasons, DeStefano (pictured above) argued. You should think of jobs as regional, he said: A plant may be in Cheshire or North Haven, but the workers come from all over. Similarly, 70 percent of New Haven’s 73,000 jobs are held by people who live outside the city, he said; while slightly more than half the employed New Haveners commute to out-of-town jobs. Also, broad job-creation plans, not targeted to a specific industry, don’t play to a city’s strength, DeStefano maintained.

Other tax incentive programs—like the state film tax credit program, or efforts to lure sports teams—can prove a waste of money over the long term because governments are competing for jobs they can lose a few years later to a different bidder, he argued.

“To me the better and more sustainable investment [for a city] is to promote growth that can sustain jobs that will stay here” and develop people to be able to keep those jobs, DeStefano argued. A city has to target its money to grow jobs for which it can compete, he said. In New Haven’s case, that means “eds and meds”—medical and science-related development (the cancer hospital, Science Park) and higher-ed expansion, like Yale’s proposed new $145 million School of Management campus and the $198 million Gateway Community College campus going up downtown. Those jobs—blue, pink, and white-collar—will likely stay here long term and support secondary jobs, from supermarket cashiers to accountants and lawyers, DeStefano argued.

To that end, he announced recently that he plans to spend some $25 million to close part of the Route 34 Connector and build a platform over it, so developer Carter Winstanley can build a new tech center called 100 Church St. or “Downtown Crossing” similar to its 300 George St. building a block away. The city’s applying to the feds for the $25 million. The project would created an estimated 1,200 construction jobs and 900 permanent jobs.

DeStefano said he also aims to make more of the land around the Yale medical district available for building. To that end, his staff has begun working on a plan to reconfigure Lafayette Street, a jumbled crossroads in the Hill near College Plaza and Route 34, made desolate by urban renewal.

The mayor said the second key component of his jobs strategy is preparing people to hold and keep positions.

“Most people who ask me for jobs on the street express a desire to work,” he said. “The work habits to hold the job is another matter.”

That’s why if he had to choose how best to spend $4 million in city money, he said, he’d rather pour it into improving public schools, as part of his nascent school reform drive.

“I would argue that school change is ultimately a workforce development strategy,” he said.

As for older potential workers, DeStefano spoke of boosting training efforts already underway through his Commission on Equal Opportunities. The CEO has trained over 1,000 New Haveners for construction jobs over the past seven years, he said. “We are probably the biggest generator of construction workers in the state.”

The budget proposal he sends to aldermen in coming weeks will include a modest increase for the CEO so it can expand efforts to link those new workers to jobs, DeStefano said. Right now it focuses on city government-funded projects like school construction. He’d like to see the agency build ties to more projects throughout town.

HIRE Power

After Tuesday night’s Board of Aldermen meeting, Goldson sought to clarify his proposal. First, the cost is negotiable, he said. One mill, the amount of money he proposed spending on his plan, is a starting point, he said. “My intention is never to raise taxes,” he added.

Nevertheless, one mill—approximately $4 million—is not a lot when you consider that the city spends a total of $6 million just on police and firefighter overtime, Goldson argued. Money for jobs can be found, he said, perhaps from agencies like the Livable City Initiative. “I wonder what they’re actually doing,” he said.

Goldson said his proposal is meant to start a discussion about how to grow jobs. “We shouldn’t just say no without talking about it.”

Development may lead eventually to more jobs, but “that doesn’t mean we can’t do other things,” Goldson said. “Why not put more tools on the tool belt?”

“It doesn’t have to be $4 million,” he said. The HIRE program could start off as a smaller, pilot project, he said.

Goldson agreed with Mayor DeStefano about the strengths of regional job initiatives. “Regional is certainly better,” he said. “Because it lowers how much we have to spend.”

“But we say that about everything,” he continued. Goldson mentioned homelessness as an example of a problem that should be handled regionally, but often isn’t. “If we can’t get the regional, we should go it alone.”

Ultimately, the HIRE program would be a regional program anyway, Goldson said. The grants would be available not only for New Haven businesses but for employers that hire New Haveners in towns like Hamden and Milford and Woodbridge. The money that the city gives to out-of-town businesses would ultimately come back to New Haven as salary brought home by a New Haven resident, he argued. With a job, that resident might be more likely to buy a car or house in the city, bringing yet more dollars back to the city, he said. “We’re getting a lot bigger bang for our buck.”

Goldson voiced skepticism about the mayor’s plan to grow jobs through development.

“I don’t know if it builds permanent jobs,” he said. Building projects create jobs during construction, but after the job is over, the laborers are out of work again, Goldson said. “They’re being left at the curb.”

Goldson acknowledged that his plan is not a long-term proposal. “It’s not a new entitlement program,” he said. He characterized it as a short-term injection to jump-start hiring during a difficult time. “I want to see it done and out.”

(On a national level, some studies have been skeptical about the ability of incentive programs to convince employers to hire people they wouldn’t have otherwise taken on. Click here and here for examples.)

On The Street

Whatever strategy New Haven ends up taking, it won’t be too soon for job-seekers like Elias White (pictured at the top of the story).

White was laid of from his job 14 months ago. He worked in a warehouse in North Branford. Since then, he’s been looking for work “every day, everywhere.”

On Tuesday afternoon, he was waiting for the bus at the corner of Elm and Church streets.

“It’s rough,” he said. “No one’s hiring.” White said he’s tried hospitals, warehouses, and he’s looked for driving work. He’s had two interviews, but no luck. His unemployment payments have already been extended. They run out in two weeks. “What can you do?” he said.

At a bus shelter on Chapel Street, Bernard Miller said he’s been looking for work for a “solid three months.”

“Where haven’t I been looking?” he said. An experienced cook, he’s tried for jobs in construction, masonry, landscaping, cooking, and painting.

Miller said he supports any government action that will create jobs, as long as it happens soon. “We need work now,” he said. “It’s rough.”

Dennis McFadden (pictured) is on disability and is not working. He said he knows at least a dozen people without jobs who have gotten so frustrated they’re ready to move out of New Haven. “It’s too hard,” he said. His friends are looking to move south, where the cost of living is lower and it’s easier to find a job.

Goldfield Is Inspired

When he was elected to his third term as president of the Board of Aldermen last month, Carl Goldfield announced that he wanted to focus on jobs. He mentioned starting a Works Projects Administration-style program that would hire residents for jobs that the city currently contracts out, like paving roads.

Goldson’s plan is not exactly what he had in mind, Goldfield said on Tuesday evening. He voiced concern about the precedent that would be set if a mill is set aside for jobs. The city has a lot of needs that could use a mill’s worth of money, he said. If that money goes towards jobs, people might start asking for a mill for things like streets or tree trimming, he said.

Goldfield said he looks forward to hearing more about Goldson’s proposal. And it’s inspired him to get cracking on his WPA-style plan, which he said he has been too busy to take up. “It’s got me thinking,” he said.

Comments

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 17, 2010 2:08pm

How about the government, at every level, immediately uses every last dollar designated for highways, and general road projects to instead fund a massive rail rebuilding project. Rebuild the abandoned rails, improve existing rail and lay trolley lines in urban centers. This would put millions of Americans to work and would benefit our country financially in the future. Highways are budgetary blackholes, while rail is much more cost and use efficient.
Then after that, perhaps we can get some jobs back from Mexico, India and China. After all, we are still a manufacturing economy, its just that we don’t employ our citizens, we employ other country’s citizens. We’re still an industrialized nation, we just export our dirty industry to Mexico and we buy our oil from Canada and the middle east. Our way of generating wealth in the last couple decade apparently doesn’t work, because pushing money around on computer screens doesn’t create anything of value.
The groups that have been economically struggling for the better part of the last century deserve the opportunities that were available to European immigrants when they arrived here so that they, too, can become valued assets for our country.
While job growth in science and medical-related fields is nice, that’s all we’ve been seeing for the last 2 decades and the poverty rate has only gone up since 1990, which implies that poor people have not been a part of the job growth, which is true. Jobs for highly educated people are great but what about everybody else?
Are we supposed to wait until today’s children are educated through school reform to get these highly-educated jobs? We’ve been waiting for about 6+ decades, so perhaps its not unreasonable to ask this. But I have my suspicions about school reform. I think it is more important to put these children’s parents to work, then the entitlement culture of inner cities will likely be replaced with more positive, fruitful and useful things that comes when populations are actually providing products that people need and value-e.i. what is currently done by India and China, even the railroad project would suffice. Instead of children going home after school to neighborhoods where drugs and McDonald’s are the only perceived solutions and going home to households with unemployed moms, dads, grandparents, etc who have bleak outlooks on life and who communicate that to children, children could go home to neighborhoods and households of encouragement and hope-this would have the most positive effect on children’s education by far.
I wish that instead of paying middle eastern countries $400 billion a year for oil to spend on building and repairing blackhole highways, cul de sac subdivisions, big box chain stores, malls, and other costly, inefficient, out-dated and unsustainable endeavors aka things that cost more and more and more to maintain in the future, I wish we were using that energy to rebuild rail lines, rebuild walkable, mixed income communities with a variety of housing, access to schools (that don’t look like prisons), parks, local retail and trolley lines aka things that cost less to maintain in the future.
Unfortunately, America is probably going to keep trying to bail out banks so that we can keep buying stuff, that we can’t pay for, with credit until finally we can no longer afford to export hard earned American pay checks to the middle east and to the imaginary-capital producing banks and not because China stops subsidizes use, but because citizens no longer have any money.
We’ve been pursuing the biggest oopsy doopsy in the history of the world for the last 60 years.

posted by: Paul on February 17, 2010 2:42pm

Good to see that at least one level of government thinks unemployment is a problem we should aggressively deal with.

The ed/med approach is interesting - we’re not the small arms capital of the world anymore, and we have to stop remembering it as a paradise. People are going to have to get smarter.

Nostalgia is not a plan.

posted by: Observer on February 17, 2010 3:00pm

Give Darnell Goldson some credit. At least he is trying to propose ideas. That’s more than the rest of these Alderman have been doing about jobs for the past sseveral years!

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 17, 2010 3:54pm

Paul,
Smart enough to push imaginary money around on computer screens?

posted by: Chuck on February 17, 2010 4:01pm

Holy Cow! I never thought I would say this but I agree with a lot of what Jonathan has to say on this issue. Still reeling from disbelief, I�ll say that job growth/creation needs to include the unskilled workforce in New Haven that has gotten left behind. As the industrial infrastructure in New Haven continues to erode to loft apartments, condos and bio-medical office and lab space, the unskilled workforce is being left farther and farther behind.

How about using a hybird of Mr. Goldson�s approach to attract manufacturers to the city? We lay at the cross roads between two major cities, we have rail lines, a seaport, highways and an airport and can move product in and out of New Haven quite easily.

Building and high speed rail infrastructure would only increase the city�s attractiveness to large businesses. The rail system needs to make sense though. We need to connect New Haven with Boston and NYC and, for goodness sake, we need to be able to take the train to Bradley Airport. Not close to the airport, we need to walk off of the train and right into the terminal.

posted by: Threefifths on February 17, 2010 4:07pm

If american want to stop this problem,Then need to go after Global Outsourcing. It is a fact that If you bring back those customer service jobs that have been outsourced,
Unemployment would come down.

posted by: What's Up with City Hall on February 17, 2010 4:12pm

�not a chance in hell�—Chief Administrative Officer Robert Smuts (NH Reg)
�This is a piece of legislation that has some holes in it. Some are big enough to drive a truck through. It�s a very costly program for New Haven taxpaying residents that may not provide a whole lot,�—City Chief of Staff Sean Matteson (NH Reg)

�It�s worth being discussed. It�s useful for people to think about these things. Maybe there�s something I can learn in the discussion,�—Mayor John DeStefano (NHI)

There seems to be some sort of disconnect at City Hall. Are these guys even talking to their boss? I think Darnell Goldson is right, don’t dismiss the idea outright without some sort of dicussion. Seems like the Mayor gets it.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 17, 2010 4:43pm

Also Paul,
We don’t necessarily need the same type of jobs- e.i. gun amanufacturing-we just need to provide the same opportunities. Two entirely different things.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 17, 2010 4:51pm

Chuck,
Great points. Rail needs enormous improvements, in efficiency, cost, and use. However, I think that high speed rail is something that should perhaps be put off until we can get all rail up to a decent standard, then trying to explore high speed possibilities would be appropriate. In the northeast, and New England, more specifically, high speed rail isn’t that necessary, because a regular train could get to Hartford in 45 minutes, and New York and a little over an hour (that is if we consolidate metro north stops instead of having every little tiny town having a stop, which could be achieved when/if middle class people begin to reinvest in cities with long term residency).

posted by: Kevin on February 17, 2010 6:23pm

Jonathan, the current state DOT operating budget is $512.9 million, of which more than half ($260.6 million) is for bus and rail operations. A similar split occurs on the capital side. The New Haven rail yard will cost nearly $1 billion. For the record neither I nor any of my friends or family work directly or indirectly for the DOT.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 17, 2010 6:40pm

Kevin,
Thanks for the number, it seems surprisingly low. So that is one level of the government’s budget for transportation. So nearly 100% of that budget should be directed at fixed path transit, passenger, cargo rail to replace the interstate trucking system and trolley lines to replace the buses. The federal and municipal dollars also need to shift this way. The other implication is that people will need to live more in accoundance with the rail for any of this to work. The cost innefficiency of roads and highways comes when they are laid out to reach extremely low density places. Rail demands higher density living arrangements. Isn’t the cost to span the New Haven harbor with I-95 $1 billion+? It seems much more worthwhile to invest in rail than roads. Buses are also currently massively inefficient because they often serve very low density areas as well, which is something that trolleys cannot feasibly do, which to me, is a very good thing because it ensures that we do not continue to build on the scale at which we have been, that or developers pay privately to have the rail lines laid (like what used to happen). The private sector also needs to get involved as well. This is no small project, it will take a national effort with a unified, fully realized goal to have a chance at succeeding.
Do you feel that our current system is working? Or that we should no longer use transportation budgets for rail? Also, buses are not rail, they should not be coupled with rail, the busing system in this country is embrassing.

posted by: ELIAS WHITE on February 17, 2010 9:17pm

hi just wanted to let you guys know, that you are doing a great job. getting out there and hearing from the people that going thru, I liked my article, if theres anything that i can do futher feel free to E-mail me. THANKS; sincerely; Elias white

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 17, 2010 10:06pm

One major problem with creating walkable neighborhoods that have local groceries is that it would put a huge dent in the medical-related field. We have been creating extremely unhealthy environments for a long time in this country even without the presence of dirty industry. Most neighborhoods built since WW2 are not walkable, a lot of food is unhealthy from processing, freezing and preservatives that are necessary when food is shipped and trucked thousands of miles, and our driving habits pollute the air and create and worsen asthma. These conditions have made our populace extremely sick and have chronic health issues throughout lifetimes. The things I suggest would put an end to most or all of this, which would really cut into the number of medical-related jobs that are available. Although, the money saved by not having an extremely sick populace, could be used for jobs in other sectors, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing afterall.

posted by: Paul on February 18, 2010 2:10am

Mr. Hopkins - I didn’t mention finance. Not sure how it can be all that imaginary anyway if we are in a real and deep recession. But I’m sure you’ll post in reply with another revealing lecture.
It’s gratifying to see the city move rather than wait for the Feds. Does Joe even visit CT anymore?
Other cities have carved out niches as educational and or medical research centers. The state has a brain drain problem, the city has an unemployment problem, and this could be a good boost. Not a silver bullet necessarily, but the economic geography arguments are there.

Not sure about Goldson’s idea, but not convinced that this would set a precedent either. Times are bad. Comparing this to park funding sounds cavalier. Easy to say if you’re employed. We’re looking at long term unemployment rates of 10% till 2015. That could be generationally catastrophic.

posted by: The Professor on February 18, 2010 5:34am

A few things here.

Credit where credit is due, it’s nice to see Mr. Goldson working in a constructive manner. I have doubts about the feasibility of the program, but then I have doubts about most legislation. Teamwork gets stuff done, so hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Jonathan,

I’m a huge fan of high speed rail, but I don’t know that it’s going to be this panacea that we make it out to be. We might be better off spending more of the money we have now on something like improving the bus infrastructure here in New Haven in a way that makes riding the bus a more pleasant and convenient experience, thereby inducing people to drive less (http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/02/doing-it-low-tech.php). You yourself say that the busing system in this country is embarrassing, but since the fact of the matter is that we already have the infrastructure necessary for buses (i.e. roads), it makes sense to work to make it better.

As far as unskilled laborers, I’m of the idea that we should work to make them skilled—whether that means skilled manufacturing laborers, skilled service laborers, or something else. The United States is a country that is relatively abundant in skilled labor compared to the rest of the world. That means that sectors that are skilled-labor intensive are the ones that are most open to growth in this era of international trade. For better or for worse, I don’t see this or any Congress enacting trade restrictions, so the solution is to play the hand we’re dealt and try to exploit opportunities in skill industries—luckily, New Haven is a hotbed of “meds and eds,” so we’re in excellent position to do just that.

posted by: Bill on February 18, 2010 8:53am

There are a lot of experts that post on this blog, so my question to them is why do Americans have trouble finding jobs while people enter the country illegally and travel thousands of miles and find work here? Is it because the illegals are smarter, work harder, work for less money?

There are many job wanted ads in the tech field. Many of the jobs are being filled with legal immigrants. Are they smarter, work harder, work for less money?

It would be a good piece for investigative journalism to speak confidentially to employers who hire illegal immigrants and legal immigrants to find out why they are more desirable than Americans.

posted by: Alan Felder on February 18, 2010 9:16am

Chief Administrative Office Robert Smuts and City Chief of Staff Sean Matteson(Hiring incentive program proposed in New Haven-The New Haven Register(nhregister.com))are you two guys apart of the neo-conservative,right-wing, tea party movement, obstructionist in every sense of the word. You owe the citizens of The City of New Haven an apology ASAP.

posted by: Threefifths on February 18, 2010 11:56am

Bill

It is not that illegals are smarter, work harder, It is that they will put up with exploitation and Amercan workers will not.
A lawyer friend of mine in New York worked on this case. Would you take job work like this.

The Deliverymen�s Uprising

Not surprisingly, Wu was fired. (Chen declined to comment.) At the time, it seemed like little more than an everyday boss-versus-deliveryman dispute. Then Wu found his way to the Chinese Staff and Workers� Association, an activist organization in Chinatown, which is part of a campaign fighting for better labor conditions known as Justice Will Be Served. Wu recruited his co-workers, some of whom had also been fired, to join him. The organizers set them up with an attorney, and last August, Wu and nine other deliverymen filed a lawsuit against Our Place, charging that the restaurant paid most of them just $1.75 an hour�an allegation the restaurant�s owners have denied in court papers. (State law requires restaurants to pay deliverymen at least $4.85 an hour.)

News of Wu�s standing up to the �big boss� spread quickly through the deliveryman community, especially the contingent that comes from the Fujian province in southeast China. Over the past 25 or so years, several hundred thousand people have immigrated to New York City from Fujian. Most grew up in a handful of rural counties outside Fuzhou City, in villages that are now nearly devoid of young people. Some, like Justin, left when they were just out of school; others held low-wage jobs�farmer, taxi driver, truck driver, carpenter�before leaving China. Once they get to New York, they connect with friends or relatives and find jobs that don�t require any English skills, often as restaurant deliverymen.

Although some Chinese deliverymen are working legally, many are undocumented. But employers are required by law to pay minimum wage and overtime to all of their workers, regardless of legal status. And you don�t need a green card to file a lawsuit against your employer. (There is little risk of deportation, as the courts don�t require plaintiffs to reveal their immigration status.) After Wu and his co-workers sued Our Place, it wasn�t long before the deliverymen at Saigon Grill, Ollie�s, and Republic joined in. In late July, deliverymen at yet another restaurant�the recently shuttered Rosie & Ting Noodles & Grille in the East Village�sued their employer as well, making this a five-restaurant revolt.

The battle over Saigon Grill has become the focal point of the deliverymen�s energies because, in the words of one organizer, �it�s like cutting off the head.� Many of the deliverymen from other restaurants, including Wu and Justin, have also worked at Saigon Grill, and of the restaurants being sued, the deliverymen say Saigon Grill was the worst. �If we win this case, every restaurant is going to change,� says Yu Guan Ke, 36, who worked at Saigon Grill for ten years. �If we lose or give up, every restaurant will have this situation.�

On a recent Saturday afternoon, seventeen deliverymen picketed outside Saigon Grill on University Place, in Greenwich Village, shouting so loudly they could be heard a block away: �Boycott!� �Saigon Grill!� �Boycott!� �Saigon Grill!� Around their necks, they wore homemade signs with Magic Marker slogans: GRILL THE OWNERS. DEMAND FAIR WAGES. Wu was in the crowd, as were Justin and four of his co-workers from Ollie�s. �We go to the pickets all the time to get our sweat-and-blood money back from the owner,� says Justin.

For the past four months, the men have been protesting at the Vietnamese restaurant�s two locations�here and on the Upper West Side�ten times a week. (There are actually three Saigon Grills, but the one on the Upper East Side is closed for renovations.) Many of the protesters were fired from Saigon Grill in March, when the owner, Simon Nget, shut down his entire delivery operation after the men tried to form a union. On this afternoon, Nget�s nephew stood next to the front door with a video camera trained on the protesters. Nget himself used to come out and distribute flyers telling his side of this story, but these days he stays inside; when the deliverymen protest at the Upper West Side restaurant, he uses the back entrance to avoid their jeers.

Before the conflict began, Saigon Grill had an enormous delivery business. The restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue and 90th Street employed 22 deliverymen, an unusually large number�and it was famous for the quick legs of its deliverymen; Zagat�s 2006 review called its delivery service �lightning fast.� This was especially remarkable considering the size of Saigon Grill�s delivery zone: Its menu promised delivery up to 40 blocks or more. Deliverymen at the Upper West Side location recount dropping off orders from midtown to northern Harlem. Some deliveries were so far away the round-trip could take close to an hour.

The lawsuit�and the stories the deliverymen tell�reveals the cost of keeping such an operation running. According to the deliverymen, they had to report to work on their day off anytime it rained or was especially cold�lucrative conditions for food delivery. �There�s a policy: If it�s 25 degrees or less, everyone has to go to work or they�re fired,� Wu says. They say they also had to buy and repair their own bikes and were forced to pay fines ranging from $20 to $200 for transgressions like slamming a door or being late with a delivery. The deliverymen also charge that their wages were, in effect, diminished because they sometimes had to pay to eat, violating standard industry practice. �They never cooked enough food for us,� says Yu Guan Ke, the lead plaintiff in the case. Once the food provided was gone, the deliverymen had to order from the menu�and unlike the kitchen staff and the waiters, they had to pay for the food themselves. The deliverymen say they had little choice but to spend their tip money on dinner, since speeding around on a bike for hours when you�re hungry is close to impossible.

Worse are the stories about the way the restaurant handled the two great dangers of the deliveryman�s job: injuries and robberies. In both cases, the deliverymen say, they were often forced to reimburse the restaurant�s owner if they were hurt or mugged. Xian Yi, 25, lifts one pant leg to show where a truck crashed into him in 2004. He says he fractured his lower leg, rode to the hospital in an ambulance, and got stuck reimbursing the owner for part of his medical bill. �The boss asked for $600, so I had to pay $600,� says Xian Yi. He had to borrow from three co-workers in order to afford the payment. Another deliveryman, Jian Yun, was robbed two years ago in the lobby of an apartment building. �Suddenly a guy came from the back and he had a gun,� he says. �I was so scared, I gave him the money.� The thief made off with $200 in cash and $60 worth of food. When he got back to Saigon Grill, Jian Yun says, �the first question is, �Where�s the money?� They don�t ask �How are you? Are you okay? Did you get hurt?� �

For their trouble, the deliverymen say they were paid a sum of money�typically $500 or $600 a month�that often had little relationship to the hours they worked or to the minimum wage. (In their lawsuit, the Saigon Grill deliverymen contend that some of them were paid as little as $1.70 an hour.) The rest of their income came from tips. The deliverymen say that customers usually tip $2 or maybe $3 per order. On a good night, a deliveryman could make $60 in tips. Depending on his base pay, he could earn between $20,000 and $25,000 a year.

Beyond basic New York living expenses, the deliverymen have relatives in China to support and some have smuggling debts to repay. The journey from Fujian to New York City typically involves hiring a �snakehead� to smuggle you into the country, leaving you with a debt so huge you have to work nonstop for years to dig out of it. A decade ago, the price to be smuggled was $40,000 or $50,000; now it can climb as high as $70,000. The myriad routes snakeheads use to get their �snakes� into the U.S. are astonishing in their variety: sneaking across the Canadian border; traveling from Malaysia to Mexico, then swimming across the border to Texas; flying straight into Kennedy airport, armed with a fake visa; hopscotching from Serbia to Hungary to Aruba and then to New York. Not paying your smuggling debt is not an option: Those who don�t pay up run the risk of being kidnapped, tortured, and killed.

Feel free to read the rest.

http://nymag.com/news/features/35540/index1.html

Also look at how landlords make money off of them.Would you live and work like this.

He pedals back to Ollie�s to lock up his bicycle, and soon he�ll be on his way home, to a tiny, $300-a-month cubicle on the second floor of a residential house in Jackson Heights, a floor he shares with six men from different parts of China, garment workers and factory workers, none of whom he really knows. By the time he gets in, it�s 1 or 1:30 a.m.

There are many job wanted ads in the tech field. Many of the jobs are being filled with legal immigrants. Are they smarter, work harder, work for less money?

You must don’t know about the H1-b visa that thses corporatist use to keep americans out of the work place.

http://brightfuturejobs.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&feature=player_embedded

It would be a good piece for investigative journalism to speak confidentially to employers who hire illegal immigrants and legal immigrants to find out why they are more desirable than Americans.

No they are not more desirable than Americans. Americans know the deal fair wages!!!!

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 18, 2010 2:02pm

The Professor,
Good points and if you read, I think it was, my second post I say how high speed rail is not a smart investment, at least not right away. We should first get our existing rail up from abysmal to decent, we should get our abandoned rails up to a level of use-ability and I think it’s worth looking into trolley lines to replace at least some bus lines. A trolley from the Westville Village to the intersection of Grand and Quinnipiac, for instance, would be a good location. The bus system is a problem because it runs on roads, which is a problem because there are too many roads. Between the 1930s and 1980s this country constructed astronomical numbers of new roads, so many in fact, that we cannot afford to maintain them anymore. If the buses take on routes that are much more trolley-like then that’s great, but the trend has often been to use buses similarly to how we use cars, which is a big mistake that partially derives from idiotic decisions to turn two-way streets into one-way street across.
I also think a certain number of unskilled labor jobs need to be made available to existing populations, but educating school drop outs and the unemployed in trades is definitely something to aggressively pursue as well. All the networks for American life rely on very unstable systems. How we receive products from China, for instance, may not be continuable in the coming years. We rely on a pristine interstate highway system to truck imported goods all across the nation to every little town’s walmart and target. We no longer have the capital to maintain our highways to the level that is needed to ensure that trailers aren’t breaking their axles on debris, cracks and potholes. The highways will deteriorate very quickly and we may try to pump more and more money into them by taking away from other things, which would be a waste because it would only postpone the inevitable a few more years. The implications are that we either rebuild rail, and organize retailing accordingly around the rail and keep our current system of importing Chinese-made goods, or we manufacture brooms, litter boxes, back scratches, forks, etc here in America with an American workforce which would then deploy the goods at either a local level or at a regional level with the use of cargo rail.

posted by: anon on February 18, 2010 2:34pm

Immigrants create jobs and tax revenue, not take it away. The city should be paying folks from other countries to move here and create businesses. Those businesses employ residents, both directly and indirectly (through tax revenue).

Look at Fair Haven 10 years ago, before a lot of immigrants moved in. It was boarded up and filled with crime. Now it has become significantly safer and is thriving with commercial activity and tax revenue. Compare it to dead cities like Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland that do not have much immigration.

Instead of Goldson’s $5000 for wealthy employers (who already receive massive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks), how about $5000 for families to move here from Guyana, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana and Vietnam? Pay them the $5K, they’ll fix up a house, start a business, and employ 10 residents. Pay a local business the $5K and you’ll get nowhere.

posted by: Walter on February 18, 2010 2:40pm

I’m not one to sucker punch commenters, but I’ve been thinking about this sentence since I read it earlier:

“The bus system is a problem because it runs on roads, which is a problem because there are too many roads.”

This makes no sense at all, and it’s pretty unrelated to the topic at hand. But even so, I don’t see why people have a fetish for things on rails instead of things on wheels. Buses running on roads can re-route around traffic, can operate in designated lanes, and can be used far more flexibly than trolley lines that are confined to rail routes, require new rights-of-way and have very high up-front costs. The Jersey City light rail system in NJ runs through a corridor of dense urban areas along an old rail line - perfectly sensible. But those towns all already have commuter rail service and bus lines to complement it.

Replacing bus lines because there are “too many roads” would severely limit access to transit for people not privileged to live along the trolley line.

What would make more sense from an ease-of-use perspective would be dedicated bus lanes and schedules that are predictable. Nowadays people have to wait for a bus that could run late, get snarled in traffic, and might not run on a convenient schedule. We need to think about users of the transit rather than focus on a false rail/bus choice or plan for an imaginary world without cars.

Also: why does City Hall seem to have three different answers for every question these days?

posted by: Anon on February 18, 2010 4:46pm

DeStefano is talking about a non-emergency situation. Goldson is trying to address an emergency, which is what we’ve got going on.

It is nuts. It is not unusual to meet people who’ve been looking for a year for a job.

There should have been a national works program up and running over a year ago in response to the economic downturn, like Europe managed to pull off.

We are dealing with a ridiculous level of political incompetence in Washington. States and municipalties have to do something.

DeStefano isn’t even addressing this, not at all, he is talking about long term sustainable job creation, the kind of thing we are engaged in regardless of the economic climate and the two he mentions are years if not decades out from now.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 18, 2010 4:49pm

Walter,
Great ideas. However, the issue is not that those things can’t happen, it’s that they don’t. If bus routes were more logical than they currently are, trolleys would be fairly unnecessary, but buses, like cars, are often used innefficiently on routes that do not demand a lot of use. Trolleys, to be profitable, require lots of use, which happens from dense Main Streets with walkable side streets, so yes, it requires that people live in much better organized communities.

posted by: Walter on February 18, 2010 6:49pm

Again, I hate to drop in here, but this line makes no sense:

“but buses, like cars, are often used innefficiently on routes that do not demand a lot of use”

The point isn’t that there is no demand for buses. It’s that buses can better serve riders if they operate in predictable ways. Imagine having a clock that told you how many minutes you would wait for a bus and how long it would take for that bus to arrive and your destination.

If people are using cars on the street, it’s because the bus isn’t running as efficiently as possible. It is not because there isn’t demand. The car is there because of demand! If you have a street choked with cars alongside an empty bus, it’s because the bus isn’t operating efficiently, not because the street is under-used.

Also: you want trolley lines to be useful. Not profitable. They’re not profit centers; they’re utilities. And part of utility is flexibility. That is exactly what rail trolleys don’t necessarily give you. One water main breaks and it’s game over for that day.

Lots of people need to arrive to jobs on time. If they’re late they get fired. If they can get their on time, and not have to wait a half hour in the rain for a bus, it would be a dramatic improvement. And eliminate the need for an omniscient central planner who would determine the life and death of a neighborhood by deciding whether or not it got a trolley line.

posted by: KNOW IT ALL on February 19, 2010 11:59am

Perhaps some local job creation would relive some tensions at least.

How about spending that money where it has a direct return, like repairing property - even private property to increase values. Or better yet, reducing real energy costs.

The city should consider an energy saving bonded fund.

The city could identify properties, city owned or those that receive energy subsidies that would benefit from work or new equipment to reduce energy costs.

Clearly a place for abuse if no watched but in the end the savings would reduce city costs and would employ people and train people in the interim.

The skills learned and used will continue to be needed as there is a large number of companies, and properties that can do basic work to reduce energy costs. However, even more advanced work could provide employment in the city. Additionally there are thousands of dollars of federal training dollars per person available for this type of employment

If a the Fund could be tapped by small private companies it might even be a source of profit for the city which can borrow at lower costs than private companies.

If the city doesn’t want to bond there is also money from the New Alliance Bank settlement that could be used profitably for this purpose.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 19, 2010 1:30pm

Walter,
I posted a comment yesterday, but for some reason it hasn’t shown up, perhaps I forgot to sign in.
The entire point of me bringing up trolleys in the first place, was because it would benefit the country if the federal government contracted the rebuilding of this country’s rail systems, including trolley lines. So while dedicated bus lanes and other efficiency measures are great, no new infrastructure is needed for buses, so not nearly as many jobs would be created to improve the bus systems since most of the work is already done. Also, buses are often placed on very low density routes (there are at least a half dozen in the New Haven system, and it’s only worse in other parts of the country), which would not be possible with rails, because fixed path transit demands efficient use of land unlike buses. It would be great to have dedicated bus lanes (Route 34 and Whalley would be great candidates), but all that does is imitate what a trolley does. There are also numerous studies that show that middle class people prefer trolleys over buses, and would increase ridership accordingly if they were replaced. The key demographic is to get the middle class to begin investing in logical living arrangements and logical transit systems, buses do not accomplish this, they have not accomplished this and trolleys are the way to go. A process of slowly phasing out buses for trolleys coupled with a long term plan to reorganize our built environment around neighborhood centers that are walkable to residents and accessible to children and old people are to be expected because that’s the only way trolleys will work. Also, throughout fixed path transit’s entire history in this country is has bounced back in forth between the private and public sector, the early suburbs of the 1920s for example, were turned from remote woodland and farms into viable building land because private developers personally paid for trolley lines to be sent from the central city to these suburban areas, so to suggest that trolleys cannot be profitable or never have been, simply isn’t true.

posted by: Walter on February 19, 2010 6:55pm

Looking forward to this debate. And glad Carl has been inspired. Though I do wonder how high the unemployment rate would have to go before he felt that pressure.

(As for the trolleys. Yes, they were profitable in the 1920’s. We can all Google and read Wikipedia, and I don’t think I suggested otherwise. Their profitability is pretty irrelevant, though. A fact remains, however much you ignore it: trolleys offer very little flexibility. Bus lanes would be easy to achieve, but I gather that’s the commenter’s problem with them. Some people want their own vision imposed no matter what. The claim that rich whites like trolleys isn’t a compelling reason for the city to abandon buses. Seems like an obvious point, but you can never make that assumption. Everyone on the Internets is an expert!

posted by: lance on February 20, 2010 2:38am

all the stimulus money for this area went to Yale researchers….hundreds of millions it looks like. Unreal. This does not create jobs, it only lines the pockets of his liberal white supporters.
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/locale/connecticut/new-haven

posted by: anon on February 21, 2010 6:09pm

Lance,
Who cares about safer neighborhoods, trees, parks, buses, sidewalks, bike lanes, train stations, fixing rail systems that haven’t been upgraded since 1915, youth centers, etc.? Cytokine research on lab rats is clearly the only thing that will improve our economy and sense of well-being.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on February 21, 2010 6:56pm

Walter,
This is downtown with a bus system:
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs234.snc3/22167_1242205410355_1085910074_30586346_2630063_n.jpg
This is it with a trolley system:
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs214.snc3/22167_1242205370354_1085910074_30586345_3157696_n.jpg
Trolleys make the routes they run on very profitable and desirable places to live, work and shop. Buses are much more of an afterthought used to take care of the people who cannot use cars. Perhaps there will be a viable plan put in for New Haven to make the buses run more efficiently, increase ridership, and become a major transit device in this country. I do not think that any measures applied to buses with ever make them as efficient and attractive as trolleys, but a great bus system is no doubt better than an inadequate bus system.
Also, trolley lines should come after passenger and cargo rail, those two are the most important in the short-term. Perhaps some bus lines can be replaced with trolleys; an example in the proposed downtown loop that is in the works, which if the same amount of track were laid out linearly, it could reach from Broadway well into Hamden along Dixwell. A hybrid trolley-bus system would be great, so would a slow phasing out of buses for trolleys, and at a bare minimum, we should have an efficient bus system.

posted by: William Kurtz on February 22, 2010 11:04am

I don’t know anything about the economics of trolley lines as opposed to buses, but I do agree that each has its place. How about trolley lines along Elm St. in West Haven, down Kimberly and Howard; down Whitney and/or Dixwell from Hamden, and in from the east shore, all bringing passengers into downtown.

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