Paul Bass Photo
New chief Reynolds (right) at Wednesday’s board meeting.
DeStefano: Where’s the money coming from?
It’s not open yet to meet job-seekers, but New Haven’s emerging “pipeline” has a new office, interim chief and bylaws.
Organizers of the pipeline — a year-long effort so far to funnel unemployed and underemployed New Haveners into existing jobs — took important first steps Wednesday to making their effort official.
They’ve incorporated an organization called New Haven Works. Meeting over lunch in the Chamber of Commerce’s board room, the group’s directors voted to approve a set of bylaws. They reviewed a working six-month budget to get the group off the ground. They reviewed a proposed two-year budget — $1.16 million the first year, $1.493 million the next — to present to potential funders. Click here and here to read the two budgets.
Also on Wednesday, the board’s members approved having the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven serve as the organization’s fiscal sponsor so the organization can start collecting money while it pursues approval of not-for-profit status. And they accepted two offers of free office space: first temporary space to inhabit immediately at the United Way’s 360 James St. complex; then 4,800 square feet of longer-term space Yale is building out for the organization at 205 Whitney.
The group has hired an interim executive director, Mary Reynolds, to set up that office and begin hiring a six-person staff (including herself).
The ultimate goal is to assemble a pool of job-ready underemployed and unemployed New Haveners to link up with local employers, then to follow up with both the job-seekers and the employers about why the applicants do or don’t land the jobs. New Haven has an estimated 13,000 unemployed and underemployed adults. New Haven anticipates having over 22,000 new jobs open up thanks to new development projects (including Gateway Community College and Downtown Crossing) and the booming medical-related sector. Some existing employers say they have openings but have trouble find city people ready to fill the jobs.
The pipeline/New Haven Works organization grows out of last fall’s elections, when labor-backed candidates won a majority on New Haven’s Board of Aldermen. That led to the formation of the pipeline group that formed New Haven Works. It brought together elected officials, the unions, the Chamber of Commerce, and major employers.
They were all represented in the board room at Wednesday’s meeting. Board of Aldermen President Jorge Perez (pictured), who ran the meeting, serves as the new organization’s board president. Chamber of Commerce prez Anthony Rescigno was there, too; he was elected as New Haven Works’ board secretary Wednesday. Yale-New Haven Hospital Vice-President Vin Petrini, Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander, Greater New Haven Central Labor Council President Bob Proto, and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano were also among those in the room who have played an active role in the group.
Before they approved the bylaws, DeStefano asked why no requirement was spelled out that New Haven Works itself hire only New Haveners for its staff jobs.
“Isn’t that why we’re here?” he asked.
The group amended the bylaws to require that the organize hire exclusively from the city.
The group’s initial $442,100 six-month working budget includes $178,000 in in-kind donations, including the rent as well as some of the staff positions. UNITE/HERE, the union representing Yale workers, is paying Reynolds’ $70,000 annual salary as well as the data coordinator and “research and communications coordinator” positions, at least at first. (Reynolds, who has worked for UNITE/HERE for five years, is on leave from the union to do the New Haven Works job.) That leaves $264,100 to raise. The two-year budget would also presumably include some in-kind contributions, as well, but also a combined total of $1 million or more to raise.
“Do we know where we’re going to get” all that money? DeStefano asked.
“Not at this point,” Perez responded. Reynolds has met with major employers and charitable funders like the Community Foundation to discuss potential financial support. And “there is a possibility that the state will be a major player,” Perez said, noting that it already funds a similar effort in Hartford. State money would presumably come from already existing labor-related funds and from federal jobs money that passes through Connecticut, Perez said.
One question that has hovered above the discussions about creating New Haven Works: Is a new costly bureaucracy being created to duplicate work already been done at existing agencies like the Workforce Alliance’s “CT Works” center on the Boulevard? During public hearings about the jobs pipeline, people spoke of difficulties getting jobs by going through that organization. Some participants have asked whether the pipeline effort should focus on changing that organization if it indeed has problems rather than creating a new one.
New Haven Works has a somewhat different mission in two key ways, according to both Rescigno (pictured) and Perez: It will focus on job-seekers exclusively from New Haven, not from the 30 cities and towns covered by the Workforce Alliance. And it will focus intensively on case management. A staffer will follow a job-seeker through the process of finding day care or courses or needed training (including with the Workforce Alliance). The case manager will also follow up with both the applicant and the employer after connecting them for interviews for specific jobs the employers need filled. The idea is to find out why someone may or may have landed a job.
DeStefano noted that the Workforce Alliance’s money comes with restrictions on which people the agency can help. Also it’s largely a “training program,” he said; New Haven Works will focus on “case management,” shepherding job-seekers through the process from beginning to end. At meeting’s end he, Rescigno, Reynolds, and Petrini made a plan to meet with the Alliance’s director.
New Haven city government did a trial run for the concept behind New Haven Works earlier this year. It asked employers to come to a job fair in February at Career High. And it got hundreds of New Haveners prepared to interview for the employers’ open jobs. The event itself drew 200 job-seekers. But the administration never followed up to see if it worked. This summer it hired a consultant, Elyse Lyons, to start compiling data, a mayoral spokeswoman said at the time, but the contract ran out and the report was never finished.
Click here for a queue of previous Independent stories about the emerging jobs pipeline.
"Before they approved the bylaws, DeStefano asked why no requirement was spelled out that New Haven Works itself hire only New Haveners for its staff jobs. "Isn't that why we're here?" he asked."
BRAVO. Can we take more of that approach to everything in the city? The city, and the Unions, are like a parasite if they do not at least partially take this approach.
The "jobs pipeline" is the wrong approach, in part, because it will just facilitate this parasitic relationship. Once people find jobs through it, they will most likely move themselves and their higher pay out to the suburbs.
It is a great example of a band-aid approach that, since it doesn't address the root of our problems, may actually make them worse.
The proportion of the City budget that is raised from our low income renters via the property tax, and then exported to suburban union workers each year, is massive.
Yale has begun to fix this by providing enormous incentives for its employees to live within the City (instead of, for example, choosing to pay its workers the difference) - why can't others follow suit?