If Gov. Dannel P. Malloy”™s choice for labor commissioner seemed out of sync with his other senior administrative posts ”“ economic development the primary driver ”“ he will get another crack at it.
Malloy confirmed Glenn Marshall”™s resignation as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor, marking the first major departure for the team Malloy installed after he took office in 2011.
Malloy indicated Marshall was leaving for unspecified family reasons, with the departure apparently an abrupt one in that the state had yet to begin looking for his replacement. Deputy Commissioner Dennis Murphy will be acting commissioner until a full-time replacement is named.
Whereas other senior Malloy aides could list major corporate or academic posts on their resumes ”“ Dan Esty, former Yale professor, Catherine Smith, former ING exec to name a few ”“ Marshall”™s own background was as a labor organizer. He worked his way up the construction industry ladder in the Bridgeport area, and was in fact working in the city on the day of the deadly L”™Ambiance Plaza collapse more than 25 years ago.
If knowledgeable about the training needs for meat-and-potatoes labor positions, Marshall lacked experience with corporations and their demands for sustainable pools of skilled talent, at least to the degree of Connecticut Board of Regents President Robert Kennedy, who had led the University of Maine system; or Smith, the commissioner of the department of economic and community development, with her executive experience.
In public testimony and comments, Marshall usually emphasized administrative themes in his wheelhouse ”“fair pay and safe working conditions, to name a few ”“ rather than outside-the-box brainstorming on ways Connecticut could beef up its pipeline of skilled workers.
Addressing the Connecticut General Assembly”™s higher education committee for the first time earlier this year, Marshall said he arrived in the position to find a “scattershot” system for pulling together resources on advanced training.
“We weren’t really prepared for this downturn that we”™re in and we did kind of a scattershot approach, you know, with programs and things that didn”™t really have any real coordinated effort,” Marshall said at the time. “We”™re in the process of identifying some of the key industry sectors that we really need to look at in the future — you know, health care, the green jobs portion”¦ and advanced manufacturing.
“What we”™re trying to do is harnessing and coordinating and trying to come up with a policy that will be able to develop the talent pipeline from the early days in school right on up through higher education,” he said.
With his next pick, Malloy will get another chance to find someone with that skill set, with Fairfield County offering no shortage of corporate executives and directors with extensive experience in workforce development, even as the department continues an internal overhaul begun under Marshall that includes absorbing the Connecticut Workers Compensation Commission.
“The Department of Labor has made significant progress over the last eighteen months with Glenn as commissioner, and I wish him well on whatever opportunity comes next,” Malloy said in a prepared statement.
