Allan Appel Photo
DeLauro with Tracy Ariel
The Russian meddling and national security investigation is not the only crisis-in-the making this summer.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro argued that another one may be coming, and soon, “if you eliminate the tools that make possible the American dream.”
The New Haven Democrat raised an early alarm Friday at press conference called to direct attention draconian cuts in the Fiscal Year 2018 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Funding Bill, which was released from committee on Wednesday.
Helmets to Hard Hats Zeedyk, speaking, and Heredia.
In front of a gathering of members of the city and state building trades at LEAP’s offices on Jefferson Street, DeLauro, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, called attention to the $156 billion bill, which represents a $5 billion cut from FY 2017 and includes the total elimination of $95 million for a a range of apprenticeship programs, many of which benefit the state and New Haven’s workers.
She called those programs, which include those for transitioning veterans, minorities, women, and the unemployed to a wide range of building and other trades, “tools of the American dream” that are going to be snatched away just when Americans and the economy need them most.
Among he speakers she introduced to help make her case was Jeremy Zeedyk, a former Marine and treasurer of the New Haven Building Trades, and a graduate of Helmets to Hard Hats, an apprenticeship program for veterans in the building trades.
“It’s a proven pathway. Our jobs are good. Plumbers. Carpenters, and they can’t be outsourced,” he said.
A fellow former Marine, Manny Heredia, who is training in the program to be sheet metal apprentice, spoke briefly in praise of a program that not only teaches a skill that potentially can lead to a $60,000 a year middle class salary, but the atmosphere of camaraderie and cohesion he likened to that in the military.
Amy Blackwood, of the United Labor Agency and director of program that is an apprenticeship readiness program for women and minorities in North Haven, is working with women who may have some construction experience yet who are not quite ready to be apprentices.
She said her work takes these people the last mile to apprenticeship readiness, honing not only the skills to lay brick and run electrical wire, but also shoring up financial, math, and literacy capabilities.
To keep bread on their tables many of the women in the program clock late night shifts of work to support themselves, Blackwood reported. Yet they are there at 6:30 a.m. waiting for the apprentice day to begin. The apprentice training starts at 6:45. “Construction hours I tell them,” she added.
DeLauro and New Haven Building Trades President Chris Cozzi.
Last year her program received $350,000 to support the work, but if the current slashing remains in the bill, there will be nothing in the pipeline for FY 2018, she said.
Delauro said she tried to offer an amendment in committee to restore the $95 million completely, but “it was voted down along party lines.”
“Mindless. Shameless!” she said, in a hushed voice.
Citing the number one economic problem in the country as too many people in jobs that don’t pay enough but don’t have the greater skills to move up, DeLauro said apprenticeship programs directly address this gap.
There are many other cuts in the bill — Job Corps, for example is slashed — and it is only one of 13 budget bills that comprise the full budget that will emerge from the House. The Senate does its own 13 bills, explained DeLauro’s spokesperson, Alison Dodge, and then there’s compromise or reconciliation, or if they can’t agree, continuing resolution.
So there’s still time, but as the Department of Labor apprenticeship grant program “is completely wiped out,” DeLauro said she wanted to speak to its value and to passionately sound the alarm.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “Russia … the national security investigations [are important too]. But what I want to see on morning and evening shows is a discussion of what this administration’s budget is going to do for the middle class family.”
After Heredia and another building trades apprentice in the Helmets to Hard Hats program spoke, DeLauro said, “This is still an open question on the Senate side. We’ve got to get you down there to testify.”
“You let us know, and we’ll get them down there, said Dave Roche, president of the Connecticut State Building Trades.