New Haven Rising Rallies For Local Job Commitments

Community organizers called on Yale-New Haven Hospital to boost its commitment to providing jobs to local people, as Yale graduate student allies announced a new tactic for unionization.

Both announcements took place at a rally at City Hall Monday afternoon, with clergy, community leaders and city officials showing their dedication to challenging Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital to be better employers, while honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s similar commitment to a united labor movement shortly before his assassination.

Last December, Yale University promised to hire 1,000 New Haveners over three years, with at least 500 coming from the Hill, Dwight, West River, West Rock, Newhallville, Dixwell and Fair Haven neighborhoods.

New Haven Rising organizer Kenneth Reveiz said communities want the same from Yale-New Haven Hospital. As almost half of neighbors in the Hill, where the hospital is based, live below the federal poverty line, the hospital’s top official draws in millions of dollars.

“Today, we call on the hospital to commit to an ambitious percentage increase in full-time permanent hiring from neighborhoods of need that mirrors the increase Yale University’s recent commitment will require,” he said.

Vin Petrini, Yale-New Haven’s senior vice president for public affairs, said Monday that the hospital has a good record in hiring New Haveners. He said the hospital has hired more than 600 in the last year. Yale-New Haven Hospital employs about 3,000 people from the city, according to Petrini and a recent report from grassroots group New Haven Rising.

But, Petrini added, recent state budget cuts mean hospital officials have to focus more on keeping jobs stable than making new commitments. In the last year, the state slashed Medicaid reimbursements, increased the hospital’s taxes to $182 million, and restricted growth through an executive order last week.

“We’re more concerned about preserving the excellent jobs we provide than making guarantees about the future,” Petrini said.

Organizers said they want Yale-New Haven not just to hire New Haveners, but to hire them through the New Haven Works job-referral agency, so that the community can keep track of those hires.

Mayor Toni Harp said the challenge to be a more ethical employer in the city extends to the city of New Haven itself.

“The need for commitment to more and better jobs is self-evident,” she said. ​“The city of New Haven too must have jobs that pay decent wages.”

Harp used the opportunity to push for an increase in paraprofessional salaries in the public school system—a contentious issue now in discussion at the Board of Education. Currently, the district’s 500 paras start out at $18,000 a year, and Harp, the board’s president, has called for an increase to between $25,000 and $30,000.

“Join me in ensuring our paras get decent wages,” she said. ​“They’re with our children all day long and can’t afford market-rate apartments in this city.”

Rev. Scott Marks of New Haven Rising organized the crowd to read aloud a solidarity resolution that ended with the following specific points:

• ​“recognize the bold commitment made by Yale University to hire 1,000 New Haven residents over the next three years into full-time permanent jobs and celebrate the further commitment that 500 of these jobs will go to residents in neighborhoods of need;

• ​“call on Yale-New Haven Hospital to commit to an ambitious percentage increase in full-time permanent hiring from neighborhoods of need that mirrors the increase Yale University’s recent commitment will require;

• ​“insist that Yale University grant the graduate teachers and researchers seeking unionization an election free from fear and intimidation; and

• ​“stand together until both the University and the Hospital have agreed to secure all of the high quality union jobs in the University’s clinical practices.”

Community organizers also stood with Yale graduate students and researchers as they asked the university for a fair and neutral election for unionization.

Aaron Greenberg, who heads the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), announced that the organization asked the president of UNITE Here International to charter a new local union called Local 33, which will join Local 34 and 35 in New Haven, for graduate teachers and researchers at Yale.

UNITE will hold a founding convention to charter the union March 9 at 5:30 p.m. at the Omni Hotel on Temple Street.

Greenberg said he looks forward to the new union sitting down with Yale officials to discuss what an election will look like to have Yale graduate students teachers represented by Local 33. To date Yale has resisted calls to negotiate with the students or recognize a union.