The Senate Democratic majority passed a bill Wednesday that would provide jobless benefits to strikers in Connecticut, defying Gov. Ned Lamont’s expected veto should the measure pass the House and reach his desk.
The bill would provide unemployment insurance to strikers after two weeks out of work, similar to the policies of the only two states with jobless benefits for strikers, New York and New Jersey.
A third state, Washington, would offer more limited jobless benefits next year under a bill signed into law Monday by Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat elected in 2024. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic candidate for president, vetoed a bill similar to the one passed Wednesday by the state Senate.
Senate Bill 8 is a priority of Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, a student of the American labor movement who argues that labor laws favor employers, even more so since Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House.
“This is not putting a thumb on the scale to over-balance the scale for workers. This is to at least reduce the tipping of the scale in the other direction, by at least a bit, Looney said. “That’s really how I see it.”
The measure passed on a 24-11 party-line vote, with Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, not voting.
At Looney’s insistence, the Senate narrowly passed a similar bill as a test in 2022, knowing it would not come to a vote in the House.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Wednesday that SB 8 would get a vote in the House this year in the final seven days before the legislature reaches its constitutional deadline of midnight on June 4.
“We’ve told our caucus we intend to call it and have a vote on it. It’s been around for three years,” Ritter said.
It was not on labor’s wish list when Looney called a vote in 2022, but it is a top priority in 2025.
The leaders of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and members of the International Association of Machinists, who just ended a strike at Pratt & Whitney, stood with Looney and other Democrats as they outlined the bill before debate began Wednesday afternoon.
Union demonstrators demanding passage of the bill greeted lawmakers outside the Capitol in the morning, circling a corner of the parking lot used by the governor and top legislative leaders.
The bill is one that defines the differences between Democrats, who hold strong majorities in the General Assembly and every statewide and congressional office in Connecticut, and Republicans eager to find potent wedge issues for the midterm elections in 2026.
Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, left no doubt he sees jobless benefits for strikers as politically dangerous for Democrats and potentially advantageous for a GOP struggling to find traction.
“We already have an extremely anti-business climate here. I don’t need to tell anybody that,” Harding said. “We know that already we have some of the highest taxes in the country, some of the highest electric rates in the country, some of the most burdensome regulatory climate in the country.”
Lamont, a Democrat currently weighing whether to seek a third term next year, is a former business owner who generally has been an ally of labor, but he has balked at the notion of jobless or other state benefits for strikers. He too is concerned about the state’s image as a place to do business.
“This sends a terrible signal,” Lamont said Wednesday as the Senate debated the measure.
Senate Republicans said giving strikers access to unemployment would add to the costs of employers, who pay premiums for unemployment compensation based on usage, and incentivize workers to strike.
“This will absolutely lead to higher unemployment taxes, and Connecticut will absolutely see an increase in their unemployment Trust Fund depleting much quicker than it has in the past,” said Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton.
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank largely funded by unions, says the impact would be less than 1% of unemployment compensation expenditures, and offering jobless benefits would stabilize a local economy hit by a strike. The legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis offered no assessment.
Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, a retired UAW executive, said the benefits were meant to maintain a basic cost of living.
“It’s about making sure that their kids are fed during a strike, so they have the opportunity to take advantage of the legal rights that we do have in this country,” she said.
Unions argue that the benefits could discourage strikes by making employers more willing to settle.
Kirby Boyce, a Pratt employee who has been through three strikes, two at the jet-engine manufacturer, said believed the recently ended strike would not have taken place had SB 8 been law. It’s an assertion rejected by businesses, which lobbied against the bill.
Last year, Lamont vetoed a vaguely written bill that would have created a $3 million fund that could be used to aid strikers, rather than end the prohibition on strikers getting unemployment benefits.
That veto prompted Ed Hawthorne, the president of the AFL-CIO, to lash at the governor, whose unwillingness to raise taxes on the wealthy or ease the state’s spending caps also is a source of friction with the political left.
“Gov. Lamont has failed to hear the voices of thousands of working people who urged him to stand with striking workers,” Hawthorne said then. “The governor had a choice — stand with corporate CEOs or stand with working people. Unfortunately, he chose corporate CEOs.”
The rhetoric has not changed, but now it is employed by some Democrats, most notably Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk.
“The question really today is, ‘Who are you standing up for? Are you standing up for the workers in the state of Connecticut?'” Duff said.
Looney held out hope the governor might relent.
“One of the things that we wanted to point out, of course, is that the governor has been our partner on the progressive, worker-oriented legislation that we have passed since 2019,” Looney said. “We certainly wish and hope that he would would do so again this year on on this bill.”
Lamont signed laws that increased the minimum wage from $10.10 in 2019 to $16.35 this year, created a nearly universal mandate for private employers to offer paid sick days, established a paid family and medical leave program, and banned so-called captive-audience meetings that unions say are used to intimidate workers.
The governor also worked with labor to craft legislation inspired by concerns over Amazon’s use of quotas and biometric surveillance to manage its warehouse workers. It passed the House on a largely party-line vote and awaits passage in the Senate.
If he runs again, Lamont sounded like he would be comfortable making a pitch for labor support in 2026. He said, “I think our labor credentials are pretty strong.”
