Thomas MacMillan Photo
City labor leader Elaine Braffman.
A labor battle at City Hall spilled over into Yale’s “fortress,” as city union leaders called on the university to fork over millions to pay for the continued closure of two city streets.
Municipal union representatives made that call at a Wednesday afternoon press conference at the intersection of High and Elm streets. The event was organized by Council 4 AFSCME, which represents over 1,500 city and school employees.
It was the latest development in an ongoing dispute over portions of High and Wall streets. Those portions have been closed to cars for over two decades, as a result of a 1990 agreement between the city and Yale. At that time, Yale agreed to pay $1.1 million to the city, and also agreed to a package of voluntary payments over the years. Read the agreement here.
The agreement is up for its 20-year review, and some aldermen are pressing for Yale to pay for the continued closure of the streets. Union leaders, who are locked in a pitched battle over new municipal contracts, have taken up the call.
At Wednesday’s press conference, union leaders said now is the time for the university to contribute more to the city, when New Haven is facing dire economic times and threatening to lay off more city workers. Matthew Brokman, an AFSCME representative, said a new street closure agreement should be a lease in which Yale pays close to $100 million to the city.
Yale officials responded that the institution already contributes far more than it is obliged to and that any renegotiation of the remuneration for closed streets is beyond the scope of the 20-year review. The review is limited only to looking at whether the traffic system functions properly with the closed streets, they said.
Mayor John DeStefano agreed with that assessment of the agreement and said that attacking Yale is a distraction from the real issue: pensions and health care costs will cripple the city unless unions agree on concessions.
High Street.
Wednesday’s demonstration wasn’t limited to unions. Yale sophomore Ben Crosby (at right in photo below) was the first to speak. “I call on the university to be a good neighbor,” he said. It’s “only right and fair they compensate the public” for the closure of the streets, he said.
“It’s a simple issue of fairness,” he said. “Please hold Yale accountable.”
Organizers presented a letter to Yale written by 12 alumnae of the university, calling on the school to “pay its fair share” for shutting down the streets and “sign an actual lease.”
Lloyd.
Elaine Braffman, vice-president of Local 3144 and a former alderwoman, unleashed a stemwinder against Yale. She was one of two union leaders to speak, along with Vanetta Lloyd, head of AFSCME Local 1303-102.
Braffman called Yale a “fortress” that is using “hardball corporate plundering tactics on its host city.”
Braffman, who was on the Board of Aldermen when the 1990 agreement was drafted, said the intention was to have a “thorough review of the entire agreement in 20 years.”
While city workers face layoffs and have been “demonized and scapegoated,” Yale “still sits smugly behind its fortress walls, protecting its loot,” she said.
“When the rubber hits the road, Yale is just another greedy, self-serving, cut-throat, mega-corporation!” Braffman concluded.
Braffman accused Lauren Zucker, Yale’s director of New Haven affairs, of threatening aldermen when she appeared before the City Services and Environmental Policy meeting last week.
Morand (left) and Zucker (right), with AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman.
“I was not threatening the Board of Aldermen,” Zucker said, moments later. She and her predecessor, Michael Morand, had stood nearby under umbrellas while the labor leaders spoke. “We have a great relationship with the Board of Aldermen.”
The 20-year review does not entitle the city to ask New Haven for a new payment, she said.
“The agreement is very clear,” she said. “It is a fact that it is not a lease.” The agreement was for a one-time payment.
Wall and High streets continue to be open to the public, as evidenced by the press conference; they are simply closed to cars, Zucker said.
Yale increased its voluntary payment to the city by 54 percent for Fiscal Year 2011, from $5.1 million in FY 2010 to $7.8 million in FY 2011, Zucker said. Yale pays well above what is obligated to under the 1990 agreement, she said. In fact, Yale pays more than any other university to its host city, she said.
That’s “the real story here,” Morand said. Yale pays more than it is obligated to while using a smaller percentage of city services than it otherwise might, thanks to things like taking care of its own trash.
Morand said he’s confident aldermen will abide by the terms of the 1990 agreement, which he said entitle the city only to a review of the traffic effects of the closed streets. “We’re all governed by the facts, and the facts are simple,” said Morand, who was also an alderman at the time of the 1990 agreement.
Reached later Wednesday by phone, Mayor DeStefano agreed with Morand’s facts. “The agreement only asks for a traffic review at the end of 20 years.”
“That’s a separate question from whether Yale should be doing more,” DeStefano said. “The university contributes, directly or indirectly, 10 percent of the city budget. … By comparison to any other place in America, no institution contributes as dramatically as the university does” to its local municipality.
“What this is about is the labor unions wanting the university to continue to pay for incredibly expensive health care and pension plans for their members,” he said. The unions would see Yale take away funding scholarships for our kids “so we can continue to pay non-competitive wage packages.”
Larry Dorman, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 4, has responded to this argument from the mayor in the past, and charged him with “distorting the issue.”
“Never did we say that our benefits are more important than the education or the service that the city is providing,” Dorman said. “We simply said the mayor’s school spending, not worker benefits, is a major reason for New Haven’s debt.”
“He keeps trying to point the finger away from his own inadequacies and shift attention away from his mismanagement,” Dorman said on Wednesday.
New Haveners should be embarrassed to be begging Yale for a handout. $100 million for two small sections of ancillary city streets? This is ridiculous and just makes the city look bad. The labour unions really need to focus on internal reform and cost-cutting measures such as pension modifications, healthcare costs, etc. DeStefano is right, this is a distraction from the real issues.
The city's unions are bloated machines of bureaucracy and ineptitude. Maybe it's time to rethink their relevance and, if necessary, begin to hire non-union employees.