Public Employee Union Member,
While we certainly want to share our warmest wishes for a prosperous 2018 for you and your family, we're also reaching out today with an important heads-up. Late last month, Republican legislative leaders began circulating false claims about the labor cost savings produced by the agreements you and your colleagues ratified last summer.
Lawmakers are scheduled to convene a special session this week to address ongoing budget shortfalls. The likelihood of GOP politicians — who share control of the state Senate — calling for a "re-opener" of the 2017 State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) agreements is very high.
To be clear, our agreements are legal and binding, and any such call to "re-open" talks would be little more than a deceptive political stunt. As union leaders, we have no intention of renegotiating the master agreement covering pensions and health benefits through 2027 or individual contracts covering wages and working conditions for five years. Instead, we're demanding elected leaders make better choices to close budget shortfalls than shifting more of the burden to working families or cutting vital public services. One such way would be to ask the beneficiaries of recently passed federal tax cuts to do their part for Connecticut in 2018.
Click here for our coalition's report on fighting for fairness in the new year.
Regardless of what politicians may attempt later this week, we're ready to fight forward in 2018. To defend our past gains and secure a better life for all working people, that means demanding an end to the politics as usual that has repeatedly failed our state.
More to come, and in solidarity,
Michael Barry
Vice President for Public Employees, AFT Connecticut
Jan Hochadel
President, AFT Connecticut
P.S. Click here to share our coalition's report on fighting for fairness in the new year on
Twitter
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