Ellington

After a shaky start, AFL-CIO leaders say a meeting last week with Jackson Mayor Frank Melton went well, with the mayor re-stating his commitment to working with the union in renovating or re-building aging Jackson housing.

During his mayoral campaign, Melton promised to immediately work with local and state unions to develop a program to teach disadvantaged city youth building skills that could net them $15 or above starting hourly wages in exchange for labor to rebuild crumbling housing. But nearly four months into his administration, with little progress, union members grew antsy about the plan.

David Newell, an organizer for the Mississippi Plumbers and Pipefitters Union and president of the Central Labor Council, had arranged a meet-up between Melton and national union officials during his campaign. Melton then pledged to work with the union to educate Jackson youth using an $11 million facility in nearby Pearl. His pledge, in turn, drew him their support for mayor.

The national AFL-CIO regularly lends money from its pension fund to various nationwide projects in hopes of getting a nice return in investment. The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, an investment company for Taft-Hartley and public pension plans, manages more than $3.6 billion in assets and has provided more than $4 billion in financing for housing projects nationwide. The union particularly enjoys lending its money to programs that pay off in the form of skilled workers and affordable housing.

After three months in office, however, Robert Schaffer, president of the Mississippi AFL-CIO, said Melton's promise seemed to have lost momentum. "There's a lot of things that have to happen for it to go through. I mean, true enough, the money's there, but it takes a lot of work to get it done," Schaffer said. "You can't just throw down somebody's pension money. There has to be a plan to meet the guidelines. This is a real deal, but everything has to be done, and I hope the city can come up with a plan that's acceptable."

Schaffer added that he feared the administration didn't have "enough qualified people to put a plan together at this point."

The Oct. 20 meeting between the administration and the union, said Newell, didn't convey the administration's eagerness, and it seemed clear that the administration did not employ anybody with the skills to meet the union's proposition with experience.

"The first meeting we had was on a Thursday, and the folks out of Washington weren't too impressed with them. The city provided these professionals with plans offered eight years ago that never worked. The meeting Friday went better, though. Frank Melton was there, and Melton made his position quite plain to everybody who was there," Newell said.

Newell said two representatives of the union's Housing Investment Trust took a tour of the city, met with the city's planning and development team, and have gone back to Washington to put a plan together for approval by the union's board of directors. They will return with news on Nov. 14, he said.