Press Re-Set?

In a test of whether labor relations might change at City Hall, Mayor Toni Harp and the newly elected president of city government’s management and professional union promised Monday to take a fresh look at a dispute on which both sides have deadlocked for years.

The dispute involves a petition before the state labor board in which the Harp administration seeks to have 135 positions removed from the 376-member union, AFSCME Local 3144. The administration characterizes it as an effort to remove non-supervisory positions that better belong in a non-management union; Local 3144’s previous president characterized at as a union-busting effort.

Malinda Figueroa won a close election this past Friday to become Local 3144’s new president. She and members of her challenge slate — which won 8 out of 11 races for union positions — argued that the union needed to make a better-faith effort to resolve disputes like the one over the petitions.

Harp said on her weekly appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday” program that she plans to meet with her new labor relations director, Tom McCarthy, to explore reviving a proposed compromise that Figueroa’s predecessor had turned down in return for the city dropping the petition. She said she also wants to discuss the issue with Figueroa’s team. (The petition was filed under a previous labor relations director.)

“I want to hear what they have to say. We’ve been at this for two years. I’m open” to a compromise, Harp said. ​“I want to have a reasonably good working relationship” with Local 3144, which Harp helped found when she worked for the city’s social social administration. ​“I’m hoping that [now] it won’t be acrimonious every time we have a discussion.”

Harp said that originally her administration sought to have directors and deputy directors of 12 city departments moved from Local 3144 to executive management status. Part of the argument was that those people supervise other members of Local 3144. At the same time, following up on questions first raised by the DeStefano administration, Harp’s team challenged why non-management administrative assistants and other non-supersivors are in the same union as their supervisors rather than in AFSCME Local 884.

Then-Local 3144 President Cherlyn Poindexter countered that those positions had been in the union for years and it worked fine. She also raised questions about loss of pension benefits for deputy directors, for instance, who’d been moved into executive management ranks. She accused Harp of trying to break the union because of its forceful advocacy for its members.

“You made a good point about the deputies,” Harp Monday recalled responding. She said she gradually compromised on most of the administration’s request. In the end it was asking simply to have three department director positions, including those overseeing the disabilities office and the Commission on Equal Opportunities, transferred to executive management once the current occupants left. Local 3144 turned down the proposed compromise, and the city proceeded to file its full petition to reclassify more than 100 positions, she said.

Meanwhile, new Local 3144 President Figueroa said she, too, plans to meet with both the Harp administration and AFSCME Council 4 to explore reopening talk on a possible compromise.

She said she needs to learn more about the proposed compromise and then bring it back to her members ​“if everything lines up and the offer is on the table.” She said Local 3144 members had sought details about the compromise in the past but were shut out of the process by leadership.

“I’m willing to work with the administration as long as my membership is involved and informed,” Figueroa said.

She said she has questions about a proposed compromise. For instance, she said she worries about the loss of positions that currently pay into the union’s pension plan. She noted as well that the city has submitted the petition to the state on numerous occasions. If the Harp administration withdraws the petition, in the future ​“a new administration can throw it back on the fire.”

Airbnb

Also on ​“Mayor Monday,” Harp stated in response to a listener’s question that she supports regulation of Airbnb locations in the city. Officials told Westville neighbors recently that they’re studying the question. (Click here to read a story about that.)

She has heard at government conferences about how Airbnb has worked with other municipalities on regulation, Harp said. ​“They’d much rather be regulated than outlawed.” Harp said she would like to see fire safety inspections of Airbnb units, for instance, just as with traditional rental apartments. She’d also like to see the lodgings taxed. (Without special legislation in Hartford, tax revenues would flow to the state.)

Harp also said she’s appointing a committee to explore how to continue making New Haven more bike-friendly. The goal is to move from a ​“bronze” to a ​“gold” designation in a national ranking of bike-friendly municipalities. (Read more about that here.)

Click on or download the above audio file, or click on the Facebook Live video below, for the full episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday” program.

This episode of ​“Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.