WASHINGTON – Despite opposition from Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, the Senate on Wednesday gave President Obama a big win on his efforts to negotiate a new trade pact with 11 Pacific Rim nations.
Labor
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Sharing prosperity to improve lives of Connecticut families
A recently released study by University of Connecticut economists says that the passage of a bill to impose a fee on employers who pay low wages would produce thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars in additional state revenue. It is heartening to know that when we share our wealth and ensure that costs are appropriately distributed we can indeed create a thriving state economy.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Partisan budget debate heats up at the state Capitol
The partisan game of budget show-and-tell, or don’t-show-and-don’t tell, heated up at the state Capitol once again on Wednesday. Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said the GOP would be happy to re-balance its alternative budget – provided majority Democrats take it seriously and invite Republicans into bipartisan budget negotiations.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Connecticut pension reform: Step one
How will it be possible to reform the state’s pension system when the people who are supposed to be representing the public share in all the benefits they confer on the unions? A first step would be to freeze benefits for all participants in the plans who are not covered by union contracts, and offer them 401k-type defined contribution plans for future service.
Posted inMoney, Politics
DeLauro breaks with Obama, big CT firms on Pacific trade deal
WASHINGTON – Rep. Rosa DeLauro is on a collision course with President Obama and some of Connecticut’s largest companies over a proposed trade deal with 12 countries on the Pacific Rim that span from Chile to Japan. DeLauro, D-3rd District, has become a leading opponent of the president’s plans for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.
Posted inEducation
Fact check: Who really protected teacher pension funding?
Since their endorsement of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, leaders of the largest teachers’ union in Connecticut have portrayed the governor as defender of what teachers worry about most: the future of their pensions. But while touting Malloy as the first governor to “fully fund” the long-neglected pension system, the leadership message of the Connecticut Education Association doesn’t mention that Malloy had little choice but to do so.
Posted inPolitics
Malloy wins labor endorsements, helped by Foley
The endorsement Thursday of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy by the Connecticut State Police Union reflects labor’s broader misgivings about Republican Tom Foley as much as it does support for a governor with whom it’s battled over concessions.
Posted inPolitics
Malloy delivers for SEIU, and the union returns the favor
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy basked in the embrace Wednesday of the giant Service Employees International Union, perhaps the one union in Connecticut whose relationship with the Democratic governor has been unambiguously positive.
Posted inPolitics
Malloy and Pelto finally at same microphone, if hours apart
Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman politely thanked Working Families Party members Saturday for what they did in 2010 to elect her and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. The governor then brusquely reminded them of what he did on the strength of that victory: “Elections have consequences.”
Posted inPolitics
A labor embrace for Malloy, with a jab over education
The Connecticut AFL-CIO’s biennial political convention was a two-day infomercial promoting the re-election of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, with one carefully choreographed note of discord: A rebuke to the Democratic governor’s choice of Stefan Pryor as commissioner of education.
Posted inPolitics
CT AFL-CIO mocks Foley: ‘Did I say something funny?’
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley was greeted with derisive laughter Monday as he told the Connecticut AFL-CIO that his call for a “Wisconsin moment” was simply a plea to end one-party Democratic rule in Connecticut, not to undermine collective bargaining rights.
Posted inPolitics
Tom Foley: A very, very careful GOP frontrunner
Republican Tom Foley addresses the Connecticut AFL-CIO today with one likely goal: Assuring labor he is miscast by Democrats as the next Scott Walker, the GOP governor who curtailed collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin.
Posted inPolitics
Cool to Malloy in ’06, UAW endorses him in ’14
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was endorsed for re-election Wednesday by the United Auto Workers, a union that clashed with Malloy when he was mayor of Stamford and declined to back his first run in 2006.
Posted inNews
The new voice of labor in Connecticut is female and gay
Lori Pelletier, new head of Connecticut AFL-CIO Hamden – Lori J. Pelletier appears set to be chosen by acclamation in a casino hotel ballroom Thursday as the new voice and face of labor in Connecticut, becoming the first openly gay woman to lead a state labor federation in the United States. But on Tuesday, Pelletier […]