Ernest "Earn While You Learn" Pagan at WNHH FM.
With billions of building bucks headed our way, Ernest Pagan is working to make sure young people get the same kind of career shot he received at their age.
Pagan is a carpenter. He first learned the trade the last time a billion building bucks flowed our way, during New Haven’s school-rebuilding program a generation ago.
Pagan, who grew up in the West Rock neighborhood, had participated in a pre-apprenticeship program to learn carpentry. Then in 2006 he was accepted into an “earn-while-you-learn” apprenticeship program connected with the school rebuilding program. He learned framing and sheetrocking on the job as part of the renovation and expansion of Celentano School. He ended up working on the East Rock and Hill Central school projects as well — as well as landing membership in the carpenters union. That gave him a career, complete with a livable wage and health and retirement benefits.
He grew more involved with the union, and its attendant political work. (“Politics equals jobs,” he learned.) “I did a lot of work at Yale University” as a carpenter. His last onsite construction job was as steward on the Alexion 100 College St. biotower.
Now he serves as business representative for the Carpenters Local Union 326. He spends his days checking in on workplaces and advocating for opportunities for union jobs — both work contracts, and positions for new laborers: “Talking to real people in real time, to connect the dots to get people in where they fit in.” (After reading a recent New Haven Independent article about a man collecting cans while seeking to rebuild his life, Pagan reached out to him and is arranging for him to enter a construction training program.)
In that capacity, he’s working with officials to steer young people into a new pre-apprenticeship program connected to the money headed for Connecticut under the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed last year.
Pagan, who’s 43, remarked during an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
“The federal delegation did a great job $6 billion coming to Connecticut for construction,” Pagan said. “I want to get a lot of young people signed up for the apprenticeship program. Pay it forward — that’s what I’m trying to do.”
One of the programs will take place after school at Eli Whitney, another in Waterbury.
The jobs, the opportunities, are out there to get in on the ground floor and develop a union career that ends with “retiring with dignity.”
“If you’re willing to learn and you’re willing to work, you’ve got a spot,” Pagan promised.
He invited teens and young adults to contact him either through this Facebook page or by showing up the first Monday of every month at union HQ at 500 Main St. in Wallingford to find out more and land a spot in the program.
“Somebody did it for me,” he said. “I’m looking to pay it forward.”
Pagan — named to the NAACP’s most recent list of “100 most influential blacks in Connecticut” — was U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s guest of honor for this year’s State of the Union address. He has also served as a member of the New Haven City Plan Commission for the past four years, weighing approvals for development projects and pushing for safe design and greater scrutiny of developer tax breaks.
Click on the video to watch Pagan discuss all that on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
A great labor leader!