Recently, in Hartford, I sat with workers, parents, students, and community leaders as part of the AFL-CIO’s national It’s Better in a Union: Fighting for Freedom, Fairness, and Security bus tour. We heard firsthand how Connecticut’s working families are grappling with the Trump Administration’s cruel and devastating federal cuts – paired with years of insufficient state funding.
The voices in that room weren’t painting a hypothetical scenario. They were recounting raw and authentic stories from the front lines of the attack on public K-12 and higher education systems. They were teachers, university faculty, paraeducators, custodians, administrators, and cafeteria workers who are working with even less while being expected to bridge unprecedented gaps in funding and protections.
They were parents fearing their children fall further behind while staffing, programs and supports scale back, all while struggling to afford after-school care. They were also community members who are pinned under the weight of unaffordability, watching local economies shutter from federal attacks and state complicity.
Their stories followed a similar theme though: the system is breaking under the current policies and the burden is falling disproportionately on working families.
Gov. Ned Lamont has said that Connecticut’s future depends on a strong, well-educated workforce. That future is now in jeopardy. The federal government is handing out $4 trillion in tax cuts to ultra-wealthy individuals and the largest corporations – the same groups that have been profiting at an unprecedented rate since the pandemic.
States now have the opportunity – and an obligation – to capture those backwards federal tax cuts by increasing taxes on those same individuals and corporations – turning federal greed into state investment. Connecticut is surrounded by states doing just that. Massachusetts raised $2.2 billion in one year alone with a modest 4% surcharge on millionaires—and the number of millionaires in the state actually increased.
And what about the potential impact on real families like those we heard from today? Every parent could watch their children thrive, every small business could rely on a robust workforce development pipeline, every community could access stable public services they need to move Connecticut in the right direction.
Governor Lamont has enjoyed strong labor support throughout his tenure, but recently has become unrecognizable to our members. We applauded his historic tax cut for working families in his first term, the overdue increase in the minimum wage and the establishment of paid family and medical leave. But inaction now would not only erase that legacy, it would replace it with a new one: complicity in the largest effective tax hike on working families.
On behalf of the 12.5 million working people of the AFL-CIO – and the more than 250,000 here in Connecticut – I urge the governor to take immediate action, without delay, in a special legislative session.
We look forward to hearing positive reports from our affiliates.
Fred Redmond is Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO.