Black activists rallied outside a massive Westville construction site Monday to complain that a developer is hiring on the cheap immigrant workers — like Alex (above), who originally came here from Honduras.
The protest took place at noon on Blake Street across from where Virginia-based Metropolitan Development is building 293 apartments at the site of a former factory by the West River. The project is called “The Wintergreen at Westville.”
A new group called Man-Up organized the rally. Organizer Al Felder (shown speaking in photo), a plumber, said the group formed last October when he and other local African-Americans sought jobs at the site. He said the group promotes “opportunities” for black males. In this case, it seeks contracts for local small business people.
“They refuse to even sit down at the table to talk about opportunities with us,” Felder complained. “The Wintergreen at Westville is the mother that birthed us [Man-Up]. She refuses to give us milk.” Feder said the group has about 15 members.
Minister Donald Morris, head of the Christian Community Commission, took a turn behind the bullhorn amplified through two speakers fronting Blake Street during Monday’s noon-hour traffic. “We are fed up with developers coming in the community and not employing people who represent communities of color,” Morris said. Morris, who lives nearby on Blake Street, spoke of the predominance of Latino immigrant labor apparently on the job; he said he met one Mexican worker in the neighborhood who said he was earning $3 an hour.
“To our Mexican brothers,” Morris called out during the rally. “You’re being used!” To hear more of what he said on the subject, click on the play arrow here.
It was lunch hour on the job at Wintergreen. Interviewed at various spots around the sprawling site, workers revealed a wide range of pay grades.
Carlos Rivera, who lives near the corner of Ferry and Grand in Fair Haven, said he makes around $8 an hour. He said he got a laborer’s job on the Westville site through a temp agency, Labor Ready.
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Claudio is doing better. He said he’s 18 years old — and he’s earning $18 an hour working for Monarca Masonry of Middlefield. Claudio lives in Middletown, he said. A crew of fellow Monarca workers, lunching inside a trailer, said they started work this week at that same $18 an hour rate. They said they originally came here from Mexico.
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Eric Tweet (pictured in his Fitch Street office) said he doesn’t know what individual workers make on the site. Tweet is the project manager for Wintergreen; he moved up to Meriden from Alabama to take this job for Capstone Building Corp., the general contractor hired to construct the new complex. The project itself should be finished in December, he said.
p(clear). Tweet said between 100 and 200 laborers work on the site on any given day. “This is a prevailing wage job,” he claimed. “We have some union, some non-union.”
p(clear). He hadn’t known about the lunchtime protest taking place on Blake Street. He did know about the Man-Up group’s efforts. “There have been a couple of meetings,” he said. “They were upset we didn’t hire people specifically in New Haven. We don’t hire nobody. We hire subs. Everybody had a fair chance to compete” for subcontracting jobs.
p(clear). Even though the project received zoning relief, no government money went into it. That gives the city less leverage. At least that’s what Man-Up has been told from City Hall, Feder and Morris said. They said that New Haven has struck local-employment deals in the past with employers like Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital; they want to see the same done on projects like this one.