New Bill Seeks to Protect Warehouse Workers From Unsafe Quotas, Aid Striking Families

By Hugh McQuaid

January 17 @ 5:00 am

Warehouse workers would be protected from unreasonable production quotas under priority legislation announced Wednesday by Senate Democrats, who also proposed to extend unemployment benefit eligibility to workers involved in prolonged labor disputes.

Sen. Julie Kushner, a Danbury Democrat who co-chairs the Labor and Public Employees Committee, outlined the proposal alongside caucus leaders during a midday press conference in the Legislative Office Building.

Kushner said the new protections for warehouse workers were inspired by testimony from Amazon employees, who described being pushed to meet excessive quotas in order to maintain their jobs.

“The result of that, too frequently, is workplace injuries and we know that the rate of injuries is much higher in Amazon [facilities] here in the state than it is for other, similar, work,” Kushner said. “That’s something we have an obligation and responsibility to look at, and we think we’ve come up with a good way to legislate that so that the quotas don’t result in workplace injuries.”

Kushner was joined by the Senate President Pro Temp Martin Looney and Majority Leader Bob Duff, who said the worker protections would be among the chamber’s leading priorities during the legislative session, which began last week and runs until June 4.

The legislation comes just days before former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 return to office. Duff said the incoming administration would prioritize the interests of millionaires and billionaires.

“Here in the state of Connecticut, we’re going to prioritize working people and working families and that’s why we have these two pieces of legislation that are going to be so important to workers all across our state,” Duff said.

The bill will include a provision that would make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits after they have been on the picket line for at least two weeks. Lawmakers said the goal was to even the playing field by preventing employers from negotiating in bad faith while the families of striking workers struggled without compensation.

During the press conference, Sen. Jorge Cabrera, D-Hamden, recalled a 2019 strike of more than 31,000 Stop & Shop workers across New England. He said workers are at a disadvantage while on strike because it creates financial hardships for them and their families. At the time, some families relied on donations of food and money to support their families, according to the New Haven Independent.

“We have to make a decision about whose side we’re on in the state of Connecticut. Are we on the side of working families or are we on the side of big, oftentimes global, multinational corporations, who are so far removed from the reality of what these workers go through on a daily basis to help them reach the incredible economic gains that they have,” Cabrera said.

The Labor and Public Employees Committee raised the bill during a Tuesday afternoon meeting. Republicans on the committee voted against the legislation and its protections for workers. Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, argued that the protections were unnecessary because warehouse employees were not forced to take their jobs.

“To me it’s a frustration because we’re talking about an employment situation that is voluntary,” Sampson said. “No one is being forced to work at any of these particular facilities.”

Both of the concepts included in the bill, called Senate Bill 8, have been vetted and debated during previous sessions of Connecticut’s General Assembly. Meanwhile, the states of New York and New Jersey have enacted policies making striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits after 14 days.

On Wednesday, CWA Local 1298 President David Weidlich Jr. told reporters that making striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits would shorten or prevent strikes altogether.

“It kind of levels the playing field because a lot of times we run into situations where the company is not really aggressively working to get an agreement because they know that our only resource is to go out on strike. If we were to go out on strike, we lose money. They get to keep the money that they would have to pay us,” Weidlich said. “So if both parties understand that the recourse of the strike in which the workers only get maybe 50% of their pay — but something instead of nothing, I think that gives you a lot better position to bargain.”

Advocates, Lawmakers Call for Budgetary Flexibility

By Hugh McQuaid

January 16 @ 11:23

A coalition of Connecticut advocates, labor leaders, and state legislators crowded into a Hartford conference room Tuesday to make a case for more budgetary flexibility to fund critical investments in education, housing and health care.

The group, called Connecticut For All, argued for modifications to a set of budgetary constraints that include caps on state spending and a requirement that certain revenues be set aside to eventually be used to pay down state debt. In recent years, these restrictions have resulted in supplemental debt payments totaling more than $8.5 billion.

Proponents of modifying these rules argue that these fiscal guardrails have captured a greater share of state revenue than intended and forced Connecticut to underfund certain critical services despite years of budget surpluses.

“It doesn’t matter where you live in this state, this issue affects you,” Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said. “This is an issue that makes it harder for people all across the state, who never imagined this would touch them, to do the things they need to do — the necessary things they need to do.”

The coalition outlined an agenda for this year’s legislative session, during which lawmakers will craft a two-year state budget. The group called for a variety of investments including additional state funding for Connecticut school districts and the restoration of a child tax credit, as well as fair wages and benefits for a range of publicly funded workers.

Rob Baril, president of health care workers’ union, SEIU 1199, said the group would seek improvements in how budget dollars are allocated.

“We formed this coalition because we believe that we shouldn’t have to make choices between funding health care and funding education, between funding child care and making sure that we have the infrastructure that all people in Connecticut need,” Baril said.

Jenny Graves, a special education teacher who serves as vice president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, called for changes to the state’s Education Cost Sharing formula — a program the state uses to offset the costs of local school districts — as well as livable wages for paraeducators.

“Year after year, we see billions in surplus from our fiscal policies,” she said. “It’s time to modify the fiscal roadblocks and invest in equitable education for all, especially our students with special education needs. The time for action is now.”

The event followed a Monday press conference, where Democratic leaders in the House and Senate announced their plans to prioritize education funding and housing policy during this year’s legislative session.

Senate Democrats have also argued for modifications to Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails. Last month, Senate President Martin Looney told the Connecticut Mirror that the chamber’s majority Democrats intended to make changes to the budgetary constraints.

“We won’t call any budget for a vote in the 2025 session if it doesn’t include some changes to the guardrails,” Looney said. “The guardrails are staying, but their parameters need to be updated. The guardrails aren’t a straitjacket.”

Connecticut Legislature to Tackle Housing Affordability

By Hugh McQuaid

January 15 @ 3:08 pm

Addressing Connecticut’s persistent housing shortage will be among this year’s top priorities for the state legislature’s Democratic majorities, leaders of the House and Senate announced during a rare joint press conference this week.

“We know that the lack of housing is holding our economy back,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said during a Monday afternoon press conference in the Legislative Office Building. “We know that too many people are spending too much money every month on their rent or their mortgage because house prices are so high and one of the ways we can tackle that is a supply and demand issue: we need more supply to meet the demand.”

Duff, D-Norwalk, and his House counterpart, Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, have led a working group aimed at addressing Connecticut’s longstanding housing shortage, which has inflated costs.

A 2021 Urban Institute study commissioned by the state Departments of Housing and Social Services identified a 86,000-unit gap in affordable housing available to low income families. Meanwhile, Connecticut had roughly 73,000 unfilled jobs, according to statistics from the Department of Labor. The two numbers were not unrelated, legislative leaders said.

“We do need a lot more affordable housing and it’s workforce housing,” said Sen. Martha Marx, a New London Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s Housing Committee. “It’s the housing for the teachers, for the nurses, for even the young engineers at Electric Boat.”

A 2024 Consumer Affairs report ranked Connecticut among the worst states for renters, in part due its high income-to-rent ratio, which found many residents paying 32%, or nearly one-third, of their income in rental costs.

Rojas said he expected lawmakers would focus on a combination of policies designed to encourage the construction of new housing units and protections for renters. Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said legislative efforts would include policies to encourage the construction of a broad range of housing types in communities across Connecticut.

“We need to build up the populations of the cities and to do that, we need a combination of some single family houses, we need more apartment houses, where people can rent at reasonable rates, we also need more two and three family houses that are owner-occupied with resident incoming coming in as well,” Looney said.

Despite long standing obstacles to enacting effective policy, Duff said the affordability of housing was a pressing issue among many Connecticut residents. He encouraged lawmakers and advocates to find common ground.

“We need everybody to kinda be on the same page so we can make a big difference for people in the state of Connecticut and that’s what I think is going to be very, very important: is actually finding the things that we can do — and it’s not just the answer of building more apartments or we need to build houses,” Duff said. “We can do all those things, because that’s how we’re going to grow our economy.”