Markeshia Ricks Photo
Poindexter blasts Harp administration at budget hearing.
Paul Bass Photos
Challengers Garris, Figueroa, Pair.
An election Friday will put to the test a municipal union president’s eight-year tenure — and hard-charging approach to negotiating with the city.
The election is for leadership positions of AFSCME Local 3144, which represents around 370 management and professional employees of city government. The election takes place Friday at the Central Labor Council headquarters on Chapel Street in Fair Haven.
Cherlyn Poindexter, who worked her way up through the union ranks from the position of steward, is seeking a fifth two-year term, running with a slate that includes union Vice-President Harold Brooks.
Local 3144 has been at the center of numerous controversies over the past two years, from individual job reclassifications to discipline over stolen city data and a Harp administration effort to remove numerous positions from the bargaining unit.
Poindexter, an administrative aide in the fire chief’s suite, touted her “leadership” and “experience” in a flyer directed to members voting Friday.
“I have been relentlessly fighting for security for our work for over 20 years and have been the leader of this strong union since 2009. Working for, with and many times against the Administration is a tough road that I am more than prepared to walk.”
An 11-member slate is running against Poindexter’s slate, arguing that Local 3144 needs more democratic, transparent leadership that better represents all members rather than fighting counterproductive battles to protect insiders. Malinda Figuera, an executive assistant in the Engineering Department who has worked for the city for 18 years, is seeking the top spot. Shawn Garris of the Bureau of Purchases is seeking the number-two spot.
“We need change,” Figuera said.
“We feel the current leadership has lost touch with the membership,” Garris added. “Cherlyn is trying to co-manage the city. The mayor was elected for the city, not Cherlyn.” Poindexter did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.
In a joint interview this week, Garris, Figueroa and Building Department Executive Administrative Assistant Dennice Pair, who’s running for corresponding secretary, promised to communicate more with members if elected, to form subcommittees to involve members more in decisions. The union has been without a contract since 2015; the challengers blamed Poindexter for not bargaining reasonably.
They also disagreed with her position in a controversy currently before the state Labor Relations Council, where Local 3144 is contesting a Harp administration petition to reclassify employees to remove them from the union. In previous Independent interviews, Poindexter accused Mayor Toni Harp — a founder of Local 3144 back when she worked for city government — of seeking to bust the union in order to weaken it.
Pointdexter has argued that she is determined to make the administration follow civil-service rules. (The city argues that the local shouldn’t have members who report to other members in the workplace; Poindexter disagreed, arguing that the current arrangement has worked fine for years.) The members of the union challenging Pointdexter argued that the controversy could have been avoided if Poindexter had negotiated in better faith over reasonable Harp administration requests to move some department director positions into executive management category once the current occupants left those positions.
“I would have loved to sit down and hear the mayor make a presentation to the membership” about the administration’s reasons for seeking the change, Pair said. “We have to work with the administration. We can’t be enemies. This president has made herself an enemy of the city administration. I’m not an enemy. I know it’s going to take both sides to come together for agreements. There’s a way to argue and disagree; there’s a way to do it professionally. She’s a bully.”
“We don’t let them do whatever they want. We fight for our workers,” Poindexter said in a previous interview about the reclassification petition.
Similarly, the challengers criticized Local 3144 leaders for assigning a union member to accompany an employee who was losing her job in the health department to her office and helping her steal files with the personal information of over 500 New Haveners with sexually transmitted diseases. The Harp administration subsequently fired the union member. Poindexter challenged the firing; she charged in an Independent interview that the Harp administration punished the wrong person and was covering up its own ineptitude in the matter.
Challenger Garris cited the incident as an example of union leadership excusing unethical behavior, waging fights against the public interest, and protecting insiders. (Click here and here to read more about the incident.)
From left, Brooks and Dogolo of the Poindexter slate; challengers Brown and Trachten.
Poindexter, for her part, has argued that the union needs strong leadership to protect its interest in the face of management efforts to play its own games of favorites in hiring people. She has repeatedly pointed out the importance of insisting that management follow rules rather than cut corners. Click here and here for stories with specific cases of objections she has raised on hiring and layoffs, and here to read about her success in preventing the hiring of a temporary grant writer for the police department over the chief’s objections that millions of grant dollars could be at stake.
In a written pitch to the membership for this election, Poindexter’s slate touted a “seasoned track record!” that includes winning “over $20,000 in cases for 3144 members”; the jobs back for 25 union members who’d been laid off; “bumping rights” and pension benefits for special fund employees; challenges over “anti-union animus, subcontracting and direct bargaining”; and a challenge to the state over “destruction of municipal records.” (Click here to read about a state Labor Department decision upholding Poindexter’s complaint that the Harp administration had “harassed and retaliated” against Local 3144.)
“Don’t elect the unqualified,” the Poindexter slate’s flyer urges voters.
Poindexter in a separate flyer portrayed the election as taking place at a time when Local 3144 will “face even more difficult times.” She wrote that she is “ready to hit the ground running” with expertise in contract negotiation, layoffs, grievances, labor and employment laws, petitioning, arbitration, and hearings involving workmen’s compensation, civil and human rights violations, Freedom of Information requests, and prohibitive practices.
Poindexter’s slate includes Harold Brooks for vice-president, Dean Criscio for treasurer, Carmen Mendez for recording secretary, Velisha Cloud for corresponding secretary, Linda Davis for the District 1 seat, Linda Hannans for District 4, and Georgiann Dogolo for District 5.
The challenge slate includes Figueroa for president, Garris for vice-president, Pair for corresponding secretary, Carmen Goycoechea for recording secretary, Billie Jo Wilson for treasurer, Evan Trachten for District 1 representative, Sally Brown for District 2, Tom Verderame for District 3 (who lost to Poindexter 157 to 129 when he challenged her for the presidency in 2014, in an election that had been held a second time after Poindexter was found to have used her work email to campaign), Ramona Davis for District 4, Gwendolyn Busch Williams for District 5, and Mark DeCola, Michael Fumiatti, and Margaret Targrove for trustee slots.
Barbara Montalvo is running as a “neutral” candidate, unaffiliated with either slate, for the District 2 position.
Click on or download the above audio file to listen to an interview with Poindexter and AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman on a previous episode of WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.”