The state Department of Labor is facing some pushback to its decision to close six job centers in Connecticut.
Connecticut’s unemployment rate has been dropping in recent months, and in early August, that welcome news brought some less welcome consequences for the state’s Labor Department. Federal funding, that’s based on the state’s unemployment rate, was being rolled back, and the department would have to lay off 95 employees and close six job centers, including one in Meriden.
Meriden resident Gwen Samuel was floored when she heard the news. "We have over 40 percent Hispanic population, and close to 20 percent African American," she told WNPR. "We have an unemployment rate of over seven percent, which is not far from the Depression unemployment that we’ve had in the past. So that can’t even be an option — and why was it even considered?"
Samuel is the founder of the Connecticut Parents Union, a group that works to protect the educational rights of children - she says supporting parents in finding a job is crucial to her mission, so Tuesday she organized a protest outside Meriden’s threatened job center, calling on the federal government to recognize that not every community in Connecticut is prospering.
"This is one time that the data in and of itself is misleading," she said, "because as a state it might be 5.7, but you have to be fair to the citizens of Connecticut and disaggregate that data and look at the communities that need more support."
Samuel says she'd like to see the federal government treat funding for the unemployment system in the way Title 1 money for educational disparities is disbursed, looking at the needs of individual communities, rather than statewide numbers.
She says as yet she’s received no response from the state Department of Labor which is also planning job center closures in Norwich, Enfield, New Britain, Willimantic and Torrington. When the closures were announced August 5th, Labor Commissioner Sharon Palmer said people who use the centers would be taken care of.
"We'll be providing information to the public as to how they would access services," Palmer told WNPR. "We look very carefully at the numbers that are going into those centers, the geographic location, transportation opportunities, so that we don't cut people off in a sense, so that they can't get to one of the job centers."