The variety of issues Governor Rell faces...from a changing
economy to retaining a basic employment generator to debt and more debt.
A Shift Toward Service Jobs
By MICHAEL REGAN Courant Staff Writer
September 23, 2007
Homebound traffic is just beginning to fill downtown Hartford streets
as a crowd of workers gathers on the sidewalk near the Old State House.
Several dozen strong, bearing flags and placards, they form a line and
begin the familiar union chants.
Most of the workers at this rally are in food service - cooks,
cashiers, servers, dishwashers employed in the cafeterias of downtown
businesses or at nearby colleges. They are a cross section of the city
and surrounding towns: young and old, male and female, Hispanic, black
and white.
And they are part of the fastest-growing employment group in the state,
what the U.S. Census Bureau calls the service occupations. They account
for nearly half the total growth in the state workforce from 2000
through 2006, according to new census figures.
The change in the nature of the workforce is nothing new. Across the
country, employment in service occupations has grown rapidly for years
as the proportion of workers in other areas, particularly
manufacturing, stagnated or declined.
But the latest census data indicate the change is happening more
rapidly here than in other parts of the country. Connecticut ranks in
the upper third of states in workforce growth attributed to service
occupations, the lowest-paying job category, and near the bottom in
growth attributed to professional and managerial occupations, the
highest-paying category.
Put another way, for every two workers added to the ranks of
professional and managerial employees since 2000, three entered service
occupations.
The pace of change has some economists concerned that Connecticut
ultimately could lose its cherished position in the top ranks for per
capita income.
"We have a disproportionate job creation in lower-income, lower-skill
areas," said Fred Carstensen, professor of economics at the University
of Connecticut and director of the Connecticut Center for Economic
Analysis. "You have to have those jobs - that's part of economic
development. You're going to have a range of incomes and skills. But
we're getting this corrosive shift away from the higher-income
positions. It's not good."
"We're going to see other states do better than we are," West Hartford
economist Ron Van Winkle said. "We're going to see other states begin
to catch us in median income."
The men and women marching in a long, thin loop on the Central Row
sidewalk in Hartford have an answer for that concern.
"I know for a fact I should get paid a lot more money than I get paid
right now," worker Jose Sanchez said.
Analogy To 1910s, '20s
Connecticut remains among the most white collar of states, with 39
percent of workers over 16 saying they are employed in management or
professional jobs, according to the Census Bureau's 2006 American
Community Survey, a large-scale national sampling operation. Another 15
percent said they held office jobs.
But while those categories accounted for more than half of all workers
in 2000, they accounted for just 28 percent of the people added to the
workforce since then.
Service workers represented just over 14 percent of all workers in 2000
but more than 47 percent of the growth in the workforce since then.
They include nurses aides and home health aides; security guards; food
service workers; building and grounds workers; day-care attendants;
tourism and hospitality employees; and personal appearance workers.
The category also includes relatively well-paying police and
firefighting jobs, most of which are unionized and provide benefits,
but they account for no more than a tenth of the total. Overall,
workers in the service occupations have lower median earnings than any
other group.
The median earnings of all service-occupation workers in Connecticut
rank among the highest in the country at $20,158, but that is less then
55 percent of the statewide median income, according to the census
figures, and a little more than a third of the earnings of management
and professional workers.
In addition to being the lowest-paid occupational group, service
workers are more likely to be minorities, more likely to be women and
far less likely to have year-round, full-time jobs, according to the
survey.
Steve Matthews, the Connecticut director of Unite Here, a union that
represents workers in food service and other service occupations,
likens them to an earlier group of laborers.
"The analogy I draw is to the 1910s and '20s, when there was this
upsurge in manufacturing," he said. "Those jobs were dirty, difficult
jobs, long hours, poor pay and no benefits.
"Then, beginning in the 1930s, workers started to organize," he said.
"We now look back at the late '40s, '50s and '60s as this golden era of
working-class life. That was standing on the shoulders of serious
organizing decades before that."
There's another similarity: Like the new factory workers of a century
ago, many of today's service workers are immigrants. And now, as then,
immigrants often draw suspicion and antipathy.
Although the American Community Survey figures don't break down the
service occupation workers by place of birth, for years much of the
growth in Connecticut's working age population has come from
immigration. And, Matthews said, many of the newcomers end up in the
kind of jobs his union targets.
"Our members are from all over the world. They're hardworking and come
to the United States to have a better life," he said. "They face all
kinds of challenges, and our union faces all kinds of challenges, in
terms of the outright hostility that some sectors of our society have
for immigrants."
Source Of Concern
For all they may lack in terms of pay and benefits, service jobs have
one advantage over the manufacturing jobs they seem to be replacing:
They aren't likely to be moved out of state or overseas.
"Health care, protective services, restaurants aren't affected much by
this national competition, or world competition, to find the lowest
price," Van Winkle said. "They compete against each other."
And in some ways, he said, the rapid growth of service employment can
be seen as a sign that Connecticut remains economically healthy, at
least for now: The higher your income, the more likely you are to go
out to restaurants, for example, or hire gardeners or housekeepers.
But jobs in those areas tend to be cyclical, UConn's Carstensen noted,
and can be hit hard if the economy falters. That's particularly true in
areas such as tourism, which has spurred growth in service employment
from the casinos in New London County to the new convention center in
Hartford.
The expansion of low-paying jobs and stagnation in higher-paid
occupations is a sign that the state needs work on bringing
higher-paying jobs back to the state, Carstensen said.
"It's a source of real concern for the kind of state that we are," he
said. "It just underlines how extraordinarily important it is to have a
coherent economic development strategy and for the state to make
strategic investments."
But Jacqueline Cotto and Jose Sanchez don't want jobs in different
industries. They want the jobs they have, in food service, to pay
better.
That's the point of the downtown demonstration: to push for
organization of corporate cafeteria workers employed by Aramark, the
240,000-employee international food service giant. The downtown workers
are joined by unionized employees of Aramark and other food-service
companies at nearby colleges.
Earl Baskerville, president of Unite Here, Local 217, at the University
of Hartford, said he's paid about $19 an hour plus benefits after 10
years with Aramark. Cotto, who works for Aramark at United Healthcare's
cafeteria, said she makes $11.64 an hour, without benefits.
"I've been there eight years - that was my first food service job.
Basically I do every job in that kitchen," she said. "We serve like
2,000 customers a day, so it's a busy place."
Cotto, who is 29, married and has three children, said she thinks about
going back to school so she can get a different job, but she would
rather stay where she is.
"I like the job. It's a good job. I'm a hands-on person, I like to
multi-task," she said. "I like my hours. I'm home when my kids come
home - that gives me all day with them."
That's only possible, though, because her husband has a good job, with
benefits, at the Hartford Club.
"If I wasn't married and my husband didn't have such a good job, I
would be working two jobs to make ends meet because after taxes what
you bring home isn't a lot."
Sanchez, 47, already works two jobs: 40 hours a week for Aramark at
Travelers and 30 hours in a union job for the food service company
Chartwell's at Trinity College. He and his wife, who also works at
Trinity, are raising seven children and depend on the benefits they get
from Chartwell's.
"I like what I do," he said. But he'd like to do a bit less of it.
"It'd be nice for me to have one job making that kind of money" that he
now gets from two, Sanchez said. "That's the way it should be, follow
me? Now you can spend time with the kids. Me working back-to-back jobs,
by the time I go home, the kids are asleep."
Remember
"BRAC?" Governor Rell has not forgotten the underlying
significance of the submarine base to the economy of the State of
Connecticut!
Navy to center
submarine counterterrorism training in Groton
Hartford Courant
Associated Press
March 31, 2006
GROTON, Conn. -- The submarine base in Groton will become the center of
the Navy's undersea counterterrorism operations under a plan announced
this week. Submarines are used in the war on terrorism to
intercept communication
signals, monitor troop movements and deploy special forces
overseas. Training for such activities will be consolidated at
Groton, officials
said Thursday, marking the first time such efforts have been centered
on one place.
"Our inherent stealth, endurance and intelligence-gathering
capabilities make submarines a unique and vital platform in today's war
on terrorism," Rear Adm. Mark W. Kenny said.
The Pentagon tried unsuccessfully to close the base last year as it
scaled back its Cold War military structure.
"This news should be an education for the handful of ill-informed
individuals who still see submarines as Cold War weapons," said U.S.
Rep. Rob Simmons, a Republican whose district includes the base."
Gov. M. Jodi Rell said the counterterrorism unit would diversify the
submarine base, making it more valuable to the Navy.
Approve School
Bonding; Governor was justified in blocking bloated bonding
package.
Editorial
By The Day
Published on 9/23/2007
Gov. M. Jodi Rell was justified
Friday in vetoing the $3.2 billion bond bill passed by the General
Assembly last week. She has called for the legislature this week to
pass a special bonding package limited to money for school
construction, while negotiations resume on an overall bonding deal.
This is a sound strategy. School
districts waiting promised state funding to move forward with
construction projects should not have to wait while the Republican
governor and the Democrat-controlled legislature try to work out their
differences.
The governor and legislative leaders
have been at it for some time now. The governor's administration has
characterized many of the projects in the bond bill as unnecessary
“earmarks,” knowing that has become a politically loaded word due to
the government spending depravity at the federal level in Washington.
In truth, most of the projects that
the legislature proposed borrowing money to carry out have merit. But
the reality is, Connecticut cannot afford them all. And while the
governor can be accused of playing politics with the Democratic
lawmakers, the Democrats in control of the legislature share the blame
for not presenting a more fiscally realistic proposal.
The $3.2 billion bill was not only
$610 million higher than the governor asked for back in February when
presenting her budget agenda, but also $250 million more expensive than
the plan approved by the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.
The borrowing practices of our state
elected leaders threaten to break the collective back of Connecticut
taxpayers. Among the 50 states, Connecticut ranks third in terms of
highest bonded debt per person. About $1 of every $10 collected in
taxes goes to meet that bond obligation.
Democrats note that the governor is
not obligated to pass all the requests in the bonding package to the
bond commission. But this is an insincere approach. The legislators
want to boast of all the money they have approved for local projects,
and then pin the blame on the governor when she fails to push the money
through the commission.
The governor and the Democratic
leadership can and should be able to reach a compromise on borrowing.
But don't hold school construction projects hostage while trying to
hammer it out.