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CT Examiner – Wednesday, January 15, 2025
By Robert Storace
Senate Democrats are planning to revive legislation that would provide unemployment benefits to workers who have been striking for 14 consecutive days – despite Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont’s veto of a similar measure last year.
State Sen. Jorge Cabrera, D-Hamden, the vice-chair of the Labor & Public Employees Committee, told CT Examiner that the planned legislation is at a conceptual stage, but that the final bill should be similar to the bill that passed by the State House and Senate in 2024, mostly along party lines.
“We are appealing to his [Lamont’s] sense of justice,” Cabrera said when asked why the governor would reverse himself in 2025.
The governor was asked about the proposed legislation at a press event earlier Wednesday morning. He told reporters “I don’t think so,” when asked whether he’d support a new bill. When pressed further, Lamont said, “I’ve got to see what the bill is.”
The 2024 version of the legislation, spearheaded by State Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, a longtime union organizer and co-chair of the Labor & Employees Committee, created a fund under the Office of the State Comptroller of up to $3 million in unexpended funds from the 2024 budget. The idea, though, originated in earlier legislation that would have granted workers eligible for employment benefits after being on strike for two consecutive weeks.
At the time, Lamont was critical of the bill, calling it vague and saying it was “too cute by half.” Lamont said that the bill was meant for “assisting low-income workers” without any mention of strikes.
Senate leaders, led by Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, Kushner and Cabrera held a packed press conference on the bill Wednesday afternoon in the Legislative Office Building to elaborate on the proposed legislation, Senate Bill 8. The bill’s second component is aimed at protections for warehouse workers.
Kushner told reporters that she was looking “forward to the debate [on the striking workers bill]… We think this is good for Connecticut. It’s good for working families and I’ll be very pleased to lead that discussion.”
Under current state law, striking workers are entitled to unemployment benefits if a company locks them out of the workplace – but not if a company negotiates in bad faith to cause a strike or to prolong a strike.
New York and New Jersey are the only two states that have laws on the books compensating striking workers.
Kushner said most strikes are not over money, rather, she said, “the most frequent cause of strikes is to protect working conditions, like safety working conditions or to protect your pension or protect your healthcare.”
Cabrera told reporters of his personal experience working for the union that represented Stop & Shop workers during their last strike several years ago.
“I can tell you, first hand, having been on one of those picket lines for almost two weeks, talking to workers across the state, about the hardships that it [being on strike] brings to their families and the hardship that it creates in their lives,” Cabrera said. “We have to make a decision about whose side we are on in the state of Connecticut, are we on the side of working families?”
Peter Brown, president of the 4,000-member Uniformed Professional Firefighters Association, attended the press conference in solidarity with striking workers.
“Although municipal and state firefighters don’t have the ability to strike, we are here supporting labor,” Brown told CT Examiner. “We do have firefighters that work for private industry that this bill will affect. They are always looking for safer working conditions. They are always making sure they have safe staffing. We are on the front lines fighting for those issues.”
Most Republican lawmakers opposed the 2024 legislation and – following the Wednesday press conference – State Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott and State Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, released a joint statement.
“This is Connecticut Democrats’ priority?” the statement read. “What a tone deaf, dangerous message to send to our business community. This proposal essentially tells companies to not do business in Connecticut. The unwelcome mat is out…. It reveals how out of touch the majority is.”
“Republicans continue to have fundamental philosophical problems with this bill,” the statement read. “Unemployment benefits are designed for a specific purpose. To qualify, workers need to be unemployed through circumstances that are no fault of their own, are able to work, and are looking for work. Workers who are voluntarily striking are in violation of all three.”
Senate Bill 8 also would provide protections for warehouse workers.
“There’s an insidious nature to modern fulfillment centers where employee safety often takes a back seat to corporate greed,” Looney said in a statement. “Nowhere have we seen this exemplified more clearly than in the business practices of online retailers like Amazon, whose workplace rules and expectations seem straight out of the Gilded Age. We’ll address that this session.”
CT Examiner reached out to the Amazon Press Center for comment; no one responded by press time.
In 2024, Senate Bill 412 was aimed at protecting warehouse workers by requiring employers to give their employees a written description of the quotas they must meet, and any possible adverse employment actions they may face for failing to do so. The bill passed out of several committees along party-line votes, but was never raised in the state Senate for a vote.