This woman, Michelle Cave, is writing down carpentry, then plumbing, then painting as her job field preferences, in that order. She wants to own a house one day and be able to fix those doors, steps, and cabinets that always seem to need repair. Since she had to leave her office job to care for her ailing mother, who has recently died, she very much needs a good job as well.
During the beginning of the dog days of August, when many people are vacationing from work, Cave was one of more than 100 people earnestly looking for it Tuesday, in the construction trades. She was participating in the city’s Construction Workforce Initiative 2 (CWI2), an ambitious program operated by the city’s Commission on Equal Opportunities. An orientation was held in the Hall of Records.
Begun in 2004, the program recruits, screens, and prepares New Haveners to enter into the well paying construction trades. Many (not all) of the participants live in Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) buildings. They were on hand Tuesday particularly to hear people such as Doug Gilchrist, a plumbing union member, talk about what’s involved in that trade.
“It’s tough work,” he reminded the audience of quietly listening aspirants. “Very tough. When that steam pipe broke in New York and scalded people, who do you think did the fixing?”
Gilchrist, along with an electrician and a construction labor representative, were on hand to explain the initiative’s most recent addition, the Career Development School (CDS). Through the initiative, each of the five construction trades selects five of these aspirants per trade, that is 25 people per ten-week cycle, who demonstrate based on tests, written and oral, sufficient promise to become electricians or carpenters or plumbers or painters.
According to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Local 90 rep, Rick Massicotti (shown here along with Gilchrist talking to students), the road to joining the unions through apprenticeship programs is long, sometimes taking five years and involving as much as 800 hours of schooling in addition to much on-the-job training. “But it’s really worth it,” he said. The rapt listening of the applicants indicated they didn’t need much convincing on that point.
“For those who are selected,” he said, “the training begins with work on CDS projects amid HANH. “We’ve working on five units right now in Westville Manor,” he said, “and we hope to expand.”
(Click here for an Independent story about one successful graduate of the program.)
Hundreds have gone through the program since its start, said Hildred Pearson (pictured below), the CEO’s manager of community development, “and going into a track to join the unions is only one of many options the CWI2 makes available. People who have some skills already can, after they go through the process, go right into jobs, work with contractors, and then, maybe through the contractor, down the road, receive additional training. There are many different routes. The point to make is that no one falls through the cracks. Everyone gets some kind of assistance.”
That assistance might be as simple as being directed to get a valid driver’s license and reliable transportation. Or it might be where to get a G.E.D. credential (required in the absence of high-school diploma). In other instances, said Pearson, people who do not pass the drug test (it is mandatory, the results released to the CEO, with the applicants’ permission) will be directed to programs to get clean. “There are people out there,” said Pearson, motioning to the full house in the basement of 200 Orange St., where the orientation was being held, “who didn’t get through the first part of the screening in cycles gone by, and are now back.”
The screening also involves a reading, math, and basic construction knowledge test, which was to be administered this morning after a brief break. And it involves next month additional interviews with STRIVE, a non-profit that works with the program on employability skills — making sure that people put their best foot forward, value punctuality, positive thinking, and appearance.
“The whole idea,” said Mark Wilson, the program’s utilization monitor, “is that we have at the end of the day a pool of workers, screened, trained, and prepared for the contractors and other employers.”
There are teeth in this training and also increasing credibility in the eyes of applicants because the CEO has enforcement powers as well. “On all school construction projects in New Haven,” he said, “actually any that receive city, state, or federal money, there is a requirement for 25 percent minorities, 6.9 percent female, and 25 percent New Haven residents. The pool we create enables employers to fulfill these mandates. We of course don’t compel employers to take from our pool, but our experience is that when they hire a woman or a minority and they do well, they come back to us and say, ‘Send us more.’”
If there were a problem evident in the process Tuesday morning, it was the very idea of process itself. That is, that the whole thing takes time, time that applicants such as Andre Brooks feels he doesn’t have. Brooks, a former addict, said he once could tell you the location of every bar, every shelter, and every clean and sober house in the Elm City. Now, he said, he has been clean since 2003. He earnestly hopes to build on that success through the CWI2 program. Problem is the timing. “I have mortgage payments,” he was explaining to Wilson,
“Fourteen hundred a month,” on a house he is proud to own, having recently bought in Fair Haven. And he has car payments and three little kids to support. He’s been doing it, and quite well, he said, having self-learned carpentry, plumbing, and even maintaining tractors, cranes, and the equipment of operating engineers. “I built myself a theater in the basement of my house. That involves carpentry, electricity, plumbing, the whole thing. And I’ve worked for a plumbing company too, but the company closed down. I can go from a one-inch pipe to a two, and do the elbow. The whole thing. I mean I can do all this stuff.”
His immediate problem was that Pearson said the next step in the process, the employability training, was being delayed a month until September. Brooks was hoping to speak to Wilson afterwards to see, given his work history, if he might be helped to land something sooner. He also, he said, had a hefty UI bill to deal with. If he can provide proof, pay stubs or otherwise that he has worked in certain construction trades, Brooks would be able to forgo some of the training and move more swiftly through the process.
Another applicant for whom the time involved was potentially problematic is Joseph Adams. He graduated from the Connecticut School of Electronics on Ella Grasso Boulevard, he said, in 1985. He has worked in electronics since. But raising his son along with working has made it impossible for him to pursue his dream of becoming an electrician. Until now, until the workforce program: “My son’s entered his first year of college, and so now I’m eager to do what I should have done when I was younger.” Adams put down, among his more specific preferences asbestos removal, OSHA safety training, and operating engineer training. “If I can learn about asbestos removal, that’s the kind of thing you encounter a lot in doing electrical work, and if that helps the community, that’s good too.”
Adams’ problem is that he’s arranged with his new employer, EVAX, an alarm maker, to start work in September, having set aside the better part of August to work through the CWI2 process. Now, if the workforce initiative training itself is delayed, as Pearson just announced, that’s going to present problems. “I’m going to talk to her,” he said, after the orientation.
After the half-hour break concluded, the aspirants returned and the room fell hushed as these men and women applied themselves to the math, reading, and basic construction tests.
“Yes, I made mistakes in the past,” Andre Brooks whispered to a reporter. “But we’re not bad people. We just made bad choices, and one morning I changed all that. I just need a chance.”
It appeared that he was on the way to getting another one, through CWI2, but it would be a process.
The deadline has been extended for additional applications for construction work only. The new period to apply is Sept. 10 to 14, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at 200 Orange St., in the basement meeting room. For a a flyer and full list of documents to bring, click here. For further information, call the Commission on Equal Opportunities at 946‑8160.
There should be a similar program for nursing.