Yale Promises To Hire More New Haveners

Street pressure on New Haven’s largest employer paid off, as Yale announced Friday it will hire 1,000 New Haveners over the next three years — and not just from the Prospect Hill neighborhood.

The university made the promise in a release issued in conjunction with two entities with whom it negotiated the deal: UNITE HERE’s Yale locals and New Haven Works, the training and referral agency started by Yale and its unions and political leaders in 2013 for the city’s under- and unemployed.

Under the agreement announced Friday, Yale made a commitment that at least 500 of those new 1,000 hires for permanent full-time positions will come from the Hill, Dwight, West River, West Rock, Newhallville, Dixwell and Fair Haven neighborhoods, according to New Haven Works Executive Director Melissa Mason. Yale has never made a targeted neighborhood-level hiring promise like this before.

Asked about how the agreement will be enforced, Mason said Friday that the two sides agreed to issue joint status reports ​“on an ongoing basis.”

“We’re been working with Yale HR [human resources] since New Haven Works has been open,” Mason said. ​“New Haven Works will work with Yale HR day in and day out to make this [new promise] happen. It’s going to be a lot of work. We’re going to continue to roll up our sleeves to do that work.”

“This is definitely a high point in regard to” Yale’s relationship to the city, said Local 35 UNITE HERE rsident Bob Proto. ​“The most important thing [now] is the follow-through,” giving New Haveners any extra help they need to qualify for job openings.

Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker, a Yale employee and UNITE HERE steward, told the Independent she hopes this ​“great agreement” sets a precedent for other New Haven employers.

“They stepped up to the plate to help us address the crisis in neighborhoods of need,” Walker said of Yale. ​“I hope that other employers will see what Yale has done and follow their lead.”

UNITE HERE and an affiliated community activist group, New Haven Rising, had called for Yale to hire more local people to address a New Haven ​“jobs crisis.” Yale responded earlier this year by promising to hire 500 New Haveners over two years. The groups dismissed that promise as insufficient for two reasons: They argued Yale probably would have hired that number anyway, and Yale wouldn’t agree to target that hiring to lower-income neighborhoods where unemployment is far higher than the 9 percent citywide average. (An estimated 18 percent of black New Haveners and more than 20 percent of Latino New Haveners are unemployed. The neighborhoods covered by Friday’s deal have the highest concentrations of black and Latino populations in New Haven.) Yale made that promise on the eve of a planned protest march; that march proceeded.

The scenario changed this time around.

New Haven Rising planned a protest march with mass civil-disobedience arrests in Yale’s upscale Broadway shopping district on Saturday, during prime holiday shopping hours, to call for the greater, targeted local hiring commitment.

Days before that march, Yale and the negotiators suddenly made major progress toward the new promise. At the last minute, protest organizers — with 134 marchers ready to get arrested for the broader cause — switched the target and location of the march instead to Yale-New Haven Hospital, freeing Broadway for unimpeded purchases of imported cosmetics and high-end handbags and clothing. Click on the above video to watch coverage of the march by local videographer Travis Carbonella.

“We view the employment of New Haven residents to be an integral part of our efforts to accelerate the economic development of the city,” the release quoted Yale President Peter Salovey saying.