Aliyya Swaby Photos
Tyisha Walker: “Hire the 500 now!”
A thousand demonstrators sent Yale a message: 500 jobs in two years is not enough.
The message was delivered as demonstrators took to the streets late Thursday afternoon to demand large employers in town hire more New Haveners, including New Haveners from low-income neighborhoods, at a time of a “job crisis.”
Organized by the activist organization New Haven Rising, members of unions, schools, and religious institutions packed both sidewalks and the road in between City Hall and the New Haven Green, carrying small, bright flags, banners, and human-sized placards in the name of better hiring practices.
New Haven Rising organizer Scott Marks (pictured) linked unemployment to civil unrest and recent riots in Baltimore, which he said “do not come out of thin air. There must be opportunities.” The jobs crisis disproportionately affects blacks and Latinos — 18.5 percent and 20.7 percent unemployed respectively — compared to “our white brothers and sisters” in New Haven, 7.7 percent of whom are unemployed.
Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker, a Yale dining-hall worker and secretary of UNITE HERE Local 35, took aim at an announcement by a Yale official this week that the university had committed to hiring 500 New Haveners over the next two years. The university employs around 13,000 people, some 4,000 of them from the city.
“An employer can commit to hiring 500 members over 200 years. Realistically, how many will come from areas of need?” Walker asked the cheering crowd.
Walker called on Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital to increase their hiring and make a “real plan to tackle real issues … Hire the 500 New Haven residents now and clear the way for the thousands that are behind them!”
Her message — “#HireThe500Now” appeared as a slogan on demonstrators’ placards.
Yale Vice President Bruce Alexander wrote in a letter to city officials Tuesday that Yale is committing to hire at least 100 New Haveners for construction projects and another 400 for regular university jobs over the next 24 months. He said in an interview that he came up with the number in conversatsions with “community members” who asked for the commitment; another Yale official said the university currently hires less than 200 New Haveners a year. Alexander’s letter drew skeptical comments from some community members, who were unsure whether the promise had much substance or constituted a significant change in Yale’s practices..
Addressing the crowd Thursday evening, Mayor Toni Harp said the city also has a large responsibility to “respond to the jobs crisis,” along with other large employers. She cited New Haven Works, a job-placement agency created by alders and community members, as an existing step toward job creation.
A copy of her speech called Yale’s promise to hire 500 additional workers “very good news, and an undeniably positive step in the right direction, but we expect them to do more.” She did not read this part of the speech aloud.
Co-op High School students Najeem Abubakar and Izaiah Richards (pictured above left and middle) turned out to the rally, for different reasons. Star student Abubakar has been struggling to get a job throughout his time in high school, after applying to local retail stores and coffee shops.
“I’d never get a call back,” he said. But he said he noticed people from out of town working jobs he wanted.
Richards is the grandson of Dwight Alder Frank Douglass. “The first couple of times I got a job, it was because of a connection,” he said. He knows it’s easier for him than for most of his friends in New Haven, he said. That’s why he showed up to the rally.
It doesn’t get easier once students leave high school, said Caius Robertson (pictured above right), a student at Western Connecticut State University. She joined New Haven Rising after trying for three years to get a job without any luck. “I hadn’t had a good job experience independently,” outside of programs such as Youth@Work, when she was a high school student, Robertson said.
Demonstrators pulled Yale-New Haven Hospital into their demands, as one of the city’s largest employers along with Yale University. Organizers had planned to split the march into two — with one group headed to the hospital and one headed to Ingalls Rink, adjacent to the lots where Yale is spending $600 million building two new residential colleges. In an on-the-spot change of plans, everyone headed to the construction site.
Yale and Yale-New Haven “do a lot already. They will tell you they do. But is it enough?” Laurie Kennington, president of United HERE Local 34, asked at the Ingalls destination.
“No!” marchers roared back.
Kennington (pictured) called on Yale-New Haven to be “a community member that provides good jobs right here in the city,” especially as the organization expands throughout the state.
Yale-New Haven last year hired 620 New Haveners across the system and now employs 3,270 New Haveners total, according to spokesperson Vin Petrini. At the hospital itself, 2,800 of 12,400 employees are from New Haven, he said.
Recent state budget cuts will force Yale-New Haven to be “more focused on preserving the jobs we’ve got,” he said.
UNITE HERE Local 35 and Central Labor Council President Bob Proto said at Thursday’s rally that Yale and Yale-New Haven should “sit down with the community, sit down with all of us,” and the “job crisis could be solved. We need the two largest employers to step up.”