The annual debate over Connecticut’s role in protecting workers and their ability to unionize has taken on a new urgency for Democrats as the Trump administration shrinks the federal government’s regulatory reach and purges pro-labor elements from the National Labor Relations Board.
On a series of party-line votes Thursday, the General Assembly’s Labor and Public Employees Committee acted in advance of next week’s deadline to approve bills that expose a wide chasm between majority Democrats and minority Republicans over labor-management relations, mandates and regulations.
The bills endorsed and sent to the floor of the House or Senate add to a significant list of measures approved in recent weeks, including one bill providing jobless benefits for strikers and another regulating the quotas and biometric surveillance of warehouse workers employed by Amazon and others.
Bills approved Thursday would set state standards for workers in hot weather, provide greater oversight of Uber and other ride-sharing companies, expand the family and medical leave program, and require municipalities to offer police and firefighters access to a pension plan.
While many of the bills have been attempted in previous sessions, the Democratic committee’s co-chairs, Rep. Manny Sanchez of New Britain and Sen. Julie Kushner of Danbury, say the argument for some of the measures is sharpened by a national regulatory environment they see as hostile to worker rights and unions.
“We’re trying to do everything that we can do to safeguard Connecticut employees, and that is going to take a very aggressive effort on our part to ensure that we’re doing that locally,” Sanchez said. “We’re watching Washington and essentially playing defense in some regard. It’s unfortunate, but that’s where we are right now.”
“It’s critically important for our states to step up and say, ‘We’re going to protect workers and working families,’” said Kushner, a retired UAW union organizer who was one of the Democrats who unseated Republicans in the 2018 midterm election during Donald J. Trump’s first term in the White House.
Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat and former cable TV entrepreneur sensitive to how the state’s business climate is viewed nationally, said this week he remains opposed to lifting the prohibition on strikers getting unemployment benefits, but he is open to the warehouse bill and potentially other proposals.
“If the feds are going to retreat on workplace safety, we’re going to step in. If the feds are going to retreat on the right to organize, we’re going to make sure our folks have the right to organize,” Lamont said.
The strikers bill would provide jobless benefits after two weeks on the picket line.
Ed Hawthorne, the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, and others said the strikers bill is a necessary step towards compelling companies to negotiate when workers unionize, especially as the National Labor Relations Board becomes less aggressive in forcing companies to negotiate in good faith.
“Employers will do exactly what Amazon is doing with Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia, which is ignore them,” Hawthorne said.
Employees at a Whole Foods in Philadelphia voted to unionize in January, a first for the grocery chain owned by Amazon. As they and other unions have found after organizing at Starbucks and two Amazon fulfillment centers, getting the companies to negotiate an initial contract is more difficult.
“There is nothing stopping them from running roughshod over labor rights. The state needs to step up and do what we have to do to protect working people,” Hawthorne said. The strikers bill “should be an easy lift for any Democrat who wants to stand with working people and provide a better life.”
Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said the Senate would pass a strikers bill, and he promised in January to press Lamont for his support.
“We’re going to appeal to his sense of justice and fairness and negotiate as we go along to make this law,” Looney said. “There’s no reason why Connecticut should be in a different position than New York and New Jersey, other progressive states with Democratic governors and majorities in their legislatures.”
One of the few bills reported out of labor with a strong bipartisan vote was one that would require the Lamont administration to dramatically increase the number of wage-theft inspectors at the Department of Labor. Auditors recently confirmed that the DOL is understaffed with a backlog of unassigned complaints.
They had 15 wage enforcement agents. The Lamont administration has proposed adding nine, while the bill approved by labor called for no fewer than 44 as of next year.
The majority of other labor bills are partisan.
Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, the ranking Senate Republican on labor, provides a conservative foil to the liberal Kushner. As he said when the measure was first debated in 2023, “To me, it’s an absurd notion on its face. People are voluntarily walking off the job.”
His position is unchanged. He and every other Republican on the committee voted against the latest version when the panel approved it two weeks ago.
On Thursday, Republicans complained of what they saw as a common theme in many of the bills: an overreach by state government and an intrusion in what should be left to collective bargaining.
“It is, in my view, one of the most absurd proposals that we’ve seen,” Sampson said of the ride-sharing bill. “What is the compelling state interest for this?”
Rep. Steve Weir of Hebron, the ranking House Republican, said a bill to protect workers against heat-related illnesses was flawed and unnecessary.
“This is an example of a bill trying to bring law to something that’s already well established in decades of science that go into establishing best practices to avoid heat-related injuries,” Weir said. “Our national OSHA has had these best practices. They’re updated. They’re well communicated.”
Weir said there are no statistics indicating heat-related illness are an issue in Connecticut, and elements of the proposed bill, such as a requirement that employers remind employees to drink water on hot days, border on sophomoric.
“I think this takes a level of common sense right out of the equation, where the employees and the employer could figure this out between them,” Weir said.
“Talk about the nanny state,” said Rep. Joe Canino, R-Torrington. “This just is a vast overreach by government, similar to a lot of bills in this committee.”
Chris DiPentima, the president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said the bills reported out of labor this year generally add to the costs of doing business in a region where costs already are high.
“We certainly have developed a reputation of having this antibusiness landscape in Connecticut,” DiPentima said.
CNBC ranks Connecticut at 32nd in business climate, as measured by metrics such as costs, regulatory environment and quality of life, health care and workforce. It outperformed the rest of New England but trailed New York and New Jersey. Connecticut’s quality of life was ranked ninth.
DiPentima said the state’s fiscal stability over the past five years has made the state more attractive to business, and he is encouraged by better communication between CBIA and the leaders of the labor committee.
“Manny Sanchez came to one of our board meetings, and it was well-received to have him there,” DiPentima said.
DiPentima said he hopes the committee takes a broader view of its bills and how they affect the state’s employment.
“I think the committee should take a look back over what passed in the last four years. What has it meant for Connecticut?” DiPentima said. “It hasn’t lowered the cost of living or cost of business.”