Round 2: Living Wage Dispute Heats Up

Charges and countercharges flew for a second day over a plan to increase the city’s ​“living wage,” as the mayor called the proposal unaffordable. Proponents’ response: City Hall’s making up scare stories to avoid paying low-wage workers enough to avoid living in poverty.

Mayor John DeStefano (pictured) delivered that message at 3 p.m. Wednesday in the City Hall atrium. Joining him at the press conference were the city’s head of youth services, Che Dawson, and a the president of Easter Seals chief Richard Borer. They argued the proposed ordinance amendments — which would raise the minimum amount government contractors must pay workers and would enable workers to afford health insurance — would cripple their work with young and disadvantaged people.

Yale Alderman Mike Jones, a drafter of the proposal to hike the living wage, skipped one of his first classes of the semester to be on hand to label those charges as false. Both he and the mayor accused the other side of refusing to cooperate on efforts to craft the bill.

Wednesday’s press conference was in response to Tuesday night’s contentious five-and-a-half hour joint meeting of the Board of Aldermen’s Finance and Legislation Committees. At issue was the new living wage expansion that Aldermen Jones, Roland Lemar, and Darnell Goldson have been working on for months.

Hours of heated debate led to no action. The committee voted to table the matter and hold another hearing.

The city’s current living wage law requires an hourly rate of $12 (far above the national and state minimum wages) and covers people who don/t work as city employees but rather for a limited number of the city’s direct contractors. Originally proposed by the late Alderman Phil Voigt, the law aims to ensure that people doing government work but technically working for private firms hired by City Hall avoid living in poverty.

On Tuesday night, aldermen proposed to raise the hourly rate to $14.67, expand coverage to include all employees of projects funded by any part of city government, and to give hiring preference to students or graduates of New Haven public schools.

On Wednesday, the mayor spoke out against those proposals. They would cost millions of dollars to the city and cripple economic development, he warned.

DeStefano began by expressing his support for the existing living wage ordinance, which he said he worked to pass. The new amendments, however, are ​“entirely inconsistent with what city taxpayers can afford,” DeStefano said. The legislation would cost upwards of $15 million and require every non-profit in New Haven to do its hiring through union halls, he said. That ​“would basically drop dead economic development in New Haven.”

The mayor said he is ​“open to dialogue” about the legislation. But ​“this is not the time or the place” to go forward with it as proposed, he said.

Richard Borer, former West Haven mayor and current president of Easter Seals Goodwill New Haven, also spoke against the plan. He said his organization would suffer twice under the amendments. It would be forced to pay more to its employees, without an increase in funding. And it would make it even more difficult for Easter Seals to fulfill one of its main missions, to find employment for people with disabilities, Borer said.

Easter Seals would also likely be unable to run its after-school and summer camp programs, Borer said. ​“Maybe you better take a look before you pass it.”

Che Dawson, head of the city’s youth policy, said that the plan would also have an adverse impact Youth At Work program. It would either lower the number of youth who could be hired under the program or decrease the number of work hours they could receive, Dawson said. To serve the same number of people under the new amendments would require three times the program’s current budget, he said.

Discussion of the legislation ​“needs a new starting point,” DeStefano said, at the conclusion of the press conference.

He shared a few other thoughts moments later. He said the aldermen behind the legislation haven’t cooperated with the administration. ​“The legislation got dropped two weeks ago,” he said. Since then, the alderman have been ​“unwilling to interact with us.”

The legislation is simply too broad and too costly, DeStefano said. It would even cover the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, since it’s moving into 360 State, which was built under a deal with the city, the mayor said. ​“This will have such a chilling effect on the economic activity in the city.”

DeStefano said he was surprised to hear some of the same aldermen who were decrying this year’s budget in May now supporting legislation that would increase costs for the city. They are the ​“same people who will bang us on the mill rate” during the next budget season, he said.

DeStefano sought to rebut claims that it was the administration, not aldermen, who had not been cooperative in drafting the legislation. ​“Absolutely not,” he said. ​“We reached out to them time and time again.”

Moments later, Alderman Jones sought to rebut that rebuttal. ​“It’s true that we gave them a big revision two weeks ago,” he said. ​“But time and time again they’ve been unable to produce documents related to this program.”

Jones said he has been seeking for months to get the numbers he would need to make an independent assessment of the financial impact of the legislation. The administration has been completely uncooperative, he said.

“I wish that they would give me a call,” Jones said. A meeting is scheduled for this Friday, but without the numbers he needs, there will be little to discuss, he said.

Jones acknowledged that the language of the ordinance is now a little unclear on the question of Devil’s Gear Bike Shop. It would cover projects that receive over $100,000 in assistance from the city, which includes 360 State. But the bill does not explicitly specify whether that means coverage of jobs generated during construction of such a building or by its eventual inhabitants. That’s the kind of thing that still needs to be clarified, Jones said.

Asked about DeStefano’s claim that the amendments would effect all non-profits in New Haven, Jones said, ​“That’s false. It exempts any non-profit with an annual budget of less than $1 million.” There would also be an appeals process for non-profits who cannot afford the requirements. ​“We’ve gone out of our way to ensure non-profits are not adversely affected.” And the law would cover just those employees hired with government grants at not-for-profits.

As for the impact to Youth At Work, Jones said the legislation includes language exempting ​“student interns.” He said he would be happy to adjust that language to explicitly cover Youth At Work participants.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said Thursday that the language submitted by the aldermen means that all employees of not-for-profits receiving city money would have to be paid both $14.67 an hour and health insurance benefits. ​“We’re going off what we’re reading,” she said. Jones insisted it’s a misreading.

Jones said he would like to work with the administration, but he needs the data he requested from City Hall to make the independent cost assessment. ​“I’m happy to meet whenever they want to meet,” he said. ​“But we’ve got to get the numbers.”

A Packed Hearing

Similarly passions and diverging views were on display during a five and a half hour hearing Tuesday night before the Board of Aldermen’s Finance and Legislation Committee. The committee heard the proposal to expand the city’s 1997 living wage law in a chamber packed with labor activists, mainly supporters, and a handful of area business reps, generally opposed.

The debate hearing ran from 6 p.m. to 11:29 p.m. The committee took no action; it will hold a second hearing.

On Tuesday night Jones, Lemar and Goldson formally offered these changes to the living wage law:

• An hourly raise of the rate to $14.67, which comes to about $30,000 a year, so employees can afford health insurance; or less than that per hour but with employer-paid health insurance. The rate is now $12 per hour.

• A significant expansion to include all employees who work on projects funded by any part of the city government or any projects that receive city assistance or grants. This means Board of Ed sub contractors, Tweed New Haven, the port, and many non-profits. (The law currently covers only a small set of workers.)

• Hiring preference to students or graduates of New Haven public schools or Gateway Community College or participants in registered career centers (a back-door way to promote local hiring.)

The DeStefano administration countered that the city can’t afford more than a rise to $12.50 an hour, period.

Mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Matteson, who worked for a union before coming to City Hall, declared the aldermen’s proposal as well-intended but liable to cost $13 to $30 million a year more, including possible legal costs and unintended consequences.

“You have a wonderful piece of legislation but becomes bogged down in substantive legal costs to defend it,” said city Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden.

And city youth policy chief Dawson predicted that the cost of his Youth at Work program would zoom from $1 million to $3 million because the expanded law would cover the teens he hires. That would mean he’d have to cut the roster of hired teens from 1,100 to 700, he claimed.

New Figures? Scare Tactics?

The city suddenly changed its tunes and concocted wild new, questionable costs, countered the expansion’s proponents.

“This new multimillion dollar cost is a revelation to us,” said Alderman Lemar. ​“We figured [it all] at $106,000.”

Jones produced a document showing that a city analysis was indeed that far lower number as of two months ago.

“This task is new to us,”responded city Purchasing Agent Mike Fumiatti. He said the current 500 to 600 contracts that are part of the current living wage law are monitored by the Commission on Equal Opportunitie’s office, whose chief, Nichole Jefferson, has five employees.

“The current ordinance has two people only,” he said. ​“These are administrative issues to address as we go forward.”

“We’ll look forward to working with you to find the right place to house this,” Lemar responded.

Luis Cotto, minority leader of the Common Council in Hartford, where an expanded living wage law was passed in the spring, testified in favor of New Haven’s proposal.

“I’m here to say that we did it in Hartford and the sky has not fallen,” he declared.

Law professor Michael Wishnie, whose Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale helped to research and craft the legislation, added that six months have passed and there has not been a single law suit brought as a result.

“It is entirely lawful and will not expose the city to liability,” he said. 

Cotto had no figures on the law’s financial impact so far.

Business representatives such as Kia Murrell (pictured) of the Hartford-based Connecticut Business and Industry Association cautioned that to compare the Hartford and New Haven laws might be apples and oranges.

She also echoed some of the skeptics of the legislation among the aldermen that the bill, while well meaning, was poorly conceived and essentially anti-business.

“The priority list will be a disincentive for many companies if they feel there’s a quota,” she said.

Hill Aldermen Jorge Perez said if you read the bill carefully, employers have the final choice of employee.

Still Murrell called it a mandate which along with paid health care. She called sick leave a short-sighted one-size-fits-all prescription.

Yale Local 34 member Sarah Saiano (foreground) and other unionists countered.

Describing herself as someone who was part of the fight for the original living wage law, she praised the proposed changes. Her two adult daughters and a son currently live in her home, which is highly mortgaged. She’s on the brink of bankruptcy because in part her kids have not had opportunities for living wage jobs, she said.

East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker called for a list of not-for-profits that would come in under the law’s umbrella. Jones said he’s been asking the city for the list for months, to no avail.

Jacquelyn Wright of Newhallville testified that she works for $11.50 an hour for Marrakesh, a not-for-profit that helps people with disabilities. She said she has a bachelor’s degree and would like to be able to work only one job and spend more time with her 10 year old but she has had to take a second job. A living wage expansion would make a huge difference for people like her, she said.

Of concern to the aldermen as well as city bureaucrats was whether a not-for-profit like Marrakesh would become one of the new covered employers under the law. As currently written, the not-for-profits to be covered would be limited to those that receive more than $100,000 of taxpayer money. Also, only those employees working on those grants would be covered.