Radio Silence On Local Hiring ​“Promise”

Rather than cheer, labor leaders who push Yale for local hiring had nothing to say Wednesday about the university’s promise to hire 500 New Haveners over the next two years.

“I have no comment,” UNITE HERE Local 35 and Central Labor Council President Bob Proto said as he headed into a board meeting on Whitney Avenue of New Haven Works, a job-training and placement agency he and Yale and city leaders formed.

“No comment,” echoed UNITE HERE Local 34 President Laurie Kenington as she walked into the same meeting.

Mary Reynolds, who runs New Haven Works, said she didn’t know enough about Yale’s new promise to say much about it.

The promise — made a day earlier by Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander — specifically was about New Haven Works. It addressed the public desire for more good jobs for New Haveners — a campaign through which Proto’s and Kennington’s Yale locals have brought hundreds of demonstrators onto city streets to pressure major employers. That campaign, organized by an affiliated group called New Haven Rising, is planning one such mass rally Thursday at 5 p.m., starting at City Hall and ending (in two waves) at both Yale-New Haven Hospital and Ingalls Rink, near where Yale is building two new residential colleges.

Alexander wrote in a letter to top city officials Tuesday that Yale is committing to hire at least 100 New Haveners to work for its contractors on construction projects and another 400 for regular university jobs over the next 24 months — or about 200 a year.

“Where possible, Yale will make these hires through New Haven Works,” Alexander wrote. That effort reflected the upward trajectory of relations between the university and its politically powerful unions, with which in past decades it was at war. Alexander wrote in the letter that the university will also ​“attempt to further motivate our external suppliers of goods and services to hire New Haven residents whenever possible.”

Click here to read the letter.

The letter prompted skepticism among some in the public, since it left major questions unanswered that would determine whether Yale is making a serious new commitment or repackaging current practices in advance of Thursday’s rally. Or whether those jobs will outnumber positions eliminated elsewhere at Yale. As one Hill resident posted in the comments section below: ​“I am a 61 year old New Haven resident and I believe that I am qualified to work there… considering that I have worked there for the last 20+ consecutive years and have just been advised that as of Sept. 1, THIS YEAR I will be laid off!”

Questions include: Is 200 a year a lot of local hires? Is that different from what Yale already does? Is it truly a big commitment?

Asked about that outside the New Haven Works board meeting, which he also attended, Alexander said he didn’t know.

Alexander said he didn’t come up with the 500 total number for local hires. ​“We had folks in the community saying, ​‘Would you hire 500 people?’” he said. (He didn’t specify which folks.) ​“The community in various ways has asked us for that.”

He said that of Yale’s 13,000 workers, some 4,000 live in New Haven. He said he doesn’t know if more than 200 New Haveners already get hired for non-construction jobs each year.

“Ask Mike,” Alexander said, referring to Vice-President for Human Resources and Administration Michael Peel.

Peel subsequently wrote in an email message that hiring 500 New Haveners over two years would constitute an unspecified ​“step up” in the current hiring rate.

“Staff hiring is done centrally so we are confident that we can further expand our local hiring, partnering with New Haven Works, who we have found to be a great source of local talent,” Peel wrote. ​“Yale also hires for its faculty and for post doc positions, many of whom also come from the New Haven community or move to New Haven upon hire. Since faculty hiring is done de-centrally by each major academic unit, our University commitment to hire 500 local residents over the next two years applies to our administrative staff and construction positions.”

Yale doesn’t directly hire construction workers. Its contractors do. Alexander said the university already meets regularly with contractors and union leaders to ensure that they meet a 25 percent local hiring goal on projects. It met that goal in the past, but can’t control the willingness of trade unions to hire local apprentices.

“We put the goals in our contracts,” he said. As Yale prepares a new round of construction with the two new residential colleges, this commitment will be a tool to ​“make sure we can meet the 25 percent goal.” He notes that once people get into apprenticeship programs for these jobs, they are eligible for construction jobs elsewhere in the future.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Alexander said of the questioning of his local-hiring promise.

Mayor Toni Harp released a statement Tuesday praising Yale’s promise. Told about the promise Wednesday, Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, a leader of the Board of Alders’ labor majority, said she hadn’t heard about it, but believed Yale would make good on it: ​“I’m excited. If they said it, they have to keep their word. They need help, and people need jobs. We can work together.”

It’s unclear why the union leaders — who have worked closely with Alexander on New Haven Works and enjoyed a good relationship with Yale in recent years, after decades of strife — refrained from weighing in on Alexander’s promise. One school of thought: They helped negotiate it and plan to use it as a counterpoint to pressure Yale-New Haven Hospital to follow suit. Another school of thought: They see it as far short of what Yale should be doing.

Proto said they’d have more to say at Thursday’s rally.

According to a DataHaven survey, only 47,000 out of 83,000 jobs in New Haven provide living wages. New Haveners have only 9,000 of those living wage jobs and a little less than a fourth of total jobs. Residents of low-income neighborhoods such as Dixwell, Fair Haven, and Newhallville have only 2,000 of the total living-wage jobs.

“There is a jobs crisis” in town, Proto said, and New Haveners are determined to address it.