“We should never be sending jobs overseas,” said Bill Boucher, president of the Connecticut Police and Fire Union/IAFF-IUPA and a special agent with the Department of Consumer Protection. “Connecticut has already lost over 100,000 jobs due to the failed policies of the Rell Administration. We simply cannot afford to lose more. Not only is it damaging for the families directly impacted by the lost income but also for the businesses that rely on those dollars being spent in the economy and the tax revenue generated for the state.”

Pratt & Whitney is threatening to close their East Hartford and Cheshire plants in negotiations with the Machinists. Union members are fighting for job security and to keep their jobs here in Connecticut. They have made concessions on wages, productivity goals and insurance costs, but the company has refused to concede on job security.

“Manufacturing jobs are critical to Connecticut’s economy,” said Steve Cohen, president of the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges (4Cs)/SEIU Local 1973 and a Professor of English at Norwalk Community College. “As we educate our future workforce, we need to demonstrate a commitment to creating and keeping good-paying jobs here.”

“Our union members whole-heartedly support the Machinists and their efforts to keep their jobs here in Connecticut,” said Carmen Boudier, president of New England Healthcare Employees Union, District 1199/SEIU. “Our striking nursing home workers at Spectrum Healthcare understand what it is like to have their livelihoods threatened. We stand in solidarity with them and urge UTC to come to the table with solutions for keeping these important jobs in the state and these men and woman working.”

The Connecticut Police and Fire Union, 4Cs, and District 1199 are three of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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“We know that great things happen when labor and management work together with common respect,” said Andrew Matthews, the President of the Connecticut State Police Union.” Dan Malloy and Nancy Wyman understand that the people of Connecticut want their leaders to make public safety a priority. Our mutual interest now is in helping all state agencies provide the services people need with the highest possible quality and efficiency. And it’s in helping to rebuild a state where decent jobs and quality of life are available to everyone, not just the rich few,” said Matthews, a sergeant in the Department of Public Safety’s State Police Division.

CSEA and the State Police Union are two of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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SEBAC’s complaint comes on the heels of a strongly worded letter to Hartford Hospital President and C.E.O. Elliot Joseph signed by employers, municipalities and other groups representing over 200,000 people throughout Connecticut. The letter asks the Joseph to stop seeking double digit rate increases in its negotiations with Anthem and reach a reasonable compromise before patients are denied in-network coverage at the hospital.

“Using access to patients’ medical records simply to pressure an insurer to accede to their demands is morally wrong,” said attorney for SEBAC Robert J. Krzys.

SEBAC contends that Hartford Hospital’s letter writing campaign to active and retired State employees is improper because it puts their unions’ members in the middle of a negotiations dispute. The complaint claims that it is improper to use protected health information in the context of negotiations with an insurer.

“We believe private health care information is to be used for healthcare purposes — not as a bargaining strategy with an insurer over reimbursement rates”, said Krzys, who also represents SEBAC on the State Health Care Cost Containment Committee (HCCCC). The HCCCC has successfully kept insurance rate increases to a minimum for the State Employee Health Plan.

“Hartford Hospital is manipulating our members, many of whom are deeply worried about the future of their medical care,” said Jean Morningstar, president of University Health Professionals, Local 3837 in AFT Connecticut. “The hospital is simply trying to achieve a better financial outcome in their negotiations with Anthem. This is a shameful and dangerous tactic to engage simply for profit. People need to know that they can rely on the privacy of their health information and the security of their medical coverage,” said Morningstar, whose union represents 2,600 health professionals at UConn Health Center.

Hartford Hospital has informed the Office of the State Comptroller that it has already fired one employee who it confirms engaged in improper discussions with at least one State employee who is undergoing a serious regimen of treatment. The hospital nevertheless continues to claim it can get away with contacting patients in order to encourage them to contact Anthem on behalf of the hospital’s negotiating position.

AFT is one of the 13 unions in the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State workers to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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October 19 Health Information Privacy Complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services

In an interview with the New Haven Register, Mr. Foley was quoted as saying he believed the state was in a “fiscal emergency” and as such the governor had the authority to not honor contracts with state employee unions. The very question of a fiscal emergency and collective bargaining, however, was previously addressed by the Attorney General who, in a formal opinion issued in May of 1989, rejected that argument.

“Tom Foley clearly has no sense of how government works,” said Carmen Boudier, President of New England Healthcare Employees Union, District 1199/SEIU. “His statements reflect campaign rhetoric and don’t provide realistic solutions for meeting the public service needs of Connecticut. The idea that any governor could ignore public employee contracts is ludicrous. Foley demonstrates time and again that he’d prefer running the state the way he ran his bankrupt company in Georgia.”

“We have said for more than a decade that Connecticut needs a governor who knows how to work with working families instead of against them, who is committed to an economy that provides good jobs with decent benefits for everyone,” Ms. Boudier said. “Every day Tom Foley makes more clear that he sees middle class families as expendable. That’s just not what Connecticut needs in a leader.”

While Mr. Foley’s comments show his inexperience with government function and law, he went on to say that as governor he would go to court to enforce his proposed cuts. The candidate boasted that he had been to court before, perhaps referring to his court challenges over the state’s Citizen’s Election Fund. Tom Foley’s approach to the state’s fiscal crisis — slashing vital public services at the expense of the middle class and promising no tax increases at the benefit of the wealthy — is simply unrealistic and a recipe for disaster.

“There will always be a fortunate few in our state like Tom Foley who are very rich,” said Sharon Palmer, President of AFT Connecticut. “If the Tom Foley’s have their way, there will be a few more super rich people, lots more people who are poor and out of work, and far fewer people in the middle, people with decent jobs and decent benefits and a safe community for their children and grandchildren.”

District 1199 and AFT are two of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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Attorney General Riddle’s 1989 Opinion on Abrogating Contracts for Public Employees

Added Luciano, “Governor Rell is not interested in helping the middle class face the real retirement crisis affecting most Connecticut workers. She has just offered up empty rhetoric before her commission has even taken a vote on final recommendations.”

Governor Rell is already on track to leave behind her a legacy of economic devastation, home foreclosures and terrible human suffering. To distract from the fact that neither she nor her hoped for successor have any realistic plan or program to solve the real problems of the middle class, she has now put forward a series of proposals which both break her binding promise to 45,000 working families, and would not create a single job or help a single community. If adopted, they would only further delay our economic recovery.

Said CSEA/SEIU Local 2001 Executive Director Robert Rinker, “Governor Rell has shown that she’d rather play politics than put forward real solutions for Connecticut middle class families. But she has also shown that she’s not interested in dealing with the state pension and retiree healthcare plans’ unfunded liabilities. If she were, the governor would have recommended using some of last year’s budget surplus to reverse recent pension fund deferrals to the unfunded liability. Instead, she called for cancelling bonding in the current year’s budget, which produces far less bang for the taxpayers’ buck.”

Added Rinker, “The governor’s representatives who negotiated a nearly $1 billion cost savings agreement last year didn’t put forward changes like she has presented here; they couldn’t with a straight face. Instead, she waited until an election year in order to offer up talking points for Tom Foley’s campaign for governor.”

The coalition’s leaders look forward to working with a new administration in an honest and concerted effort to help solve the real problems that confront the people of the state.  Working together, elected leaders, business leaders of good faith, and Connecticut’s middle class both in the public and the private sectors, can help build a future where every family has a chance for a decent job, with decent benefits, and a safe and dignified retirement.

Council 4 and CSEA are two of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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Just last week, the Connecticut State Employees Retirement System’s (SERS) independent actuaries projected that under current methods, the pension fund’s assets will increase by more than 45% over the next 10 years. In contrast to Rauh’s “doomsday by 2019″ conclusion, Cavanaugh MacDonald Consulting’s actuaries project Connecticut’s retirement system will be fully funded by 2040.

The Administration of Governor M. Jodi Rell and others who push “defined contribution plans” or 401(k) savings accounts over real pension protection for working families have seized upon Rauh’s April 2010 paper. In recent news articles, it has been cited as the source for promoting a policy where workers take all the risk and Wall Street makes higher profits.

But studies show that the cost to provide the same level of retirement benefits by a real defined benefit pension plan is 12.5% of payroll versus a comparable 401(k) at a cost of 22.9%. And while real pension plans are “counter-cyclical” — they help moderate downward turns in the economy by providing stable income to retirees during a recession — 401(k) type plans actually help pull the economy further down.

The reality is that dropping less costly pensions in favor of risky savings accounts does not make economic sense.

“As a member of the Governor’s OPEB (State Post-Employment Benefits Commission) Panel, I have seen the Administration’s push for a defined contribution plan for State employees,” said Sal Luciano, Executive Director of Council 4 AFSCME. “But we know that when taxpayers pay into a pension fund, they get a four to one return back into the economy as retirement income. Pensions are good for workers and they are good for the economy. Pensions are not the problem.”

The State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) continues to advocate for real solutions to Connecticut’s fiscal problems, not phony solutions that scapegoat hard-working state employees. The current state pension plan costs less than 4.7% of payroll for the typical employee, much less than many large corporations pay. Connecticut needs responsible leadership committed to making payments to unfunded liabilities and to the retirements of public service workers.

“Rauh’s report confuses the issues, which include how Wall Street’s interests conflict with secure retirement for workers,” said Carol Thomas, a member of the State Treasurer’s Investment Advisory Council who retired from the Department of Mental Retardation after more than 30 years of public service in 2003. “Retirees who rely on a 401(k) have no recourse for looking over corporate executives’ shoulders to make sure they are being responsible. These CEOs think public pension funds are a nuisance because we’re looking for secure and cost-effective investments and controlling run-away executive pay,” said Thomas, who is also a member of CSEA/SEIU Local 2001’s retiree council.

Council 4 and CSEA are two of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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June 1 NASRA Analysis of Joshua Rauh’s Paper “Are State Public Pensions Sustainable?”

June 21 Actuarial Projection of State Employees Retirement System

“SEBAC has been advocating for a pooling mechanism for years,” said Sal Luciano, Executive Director of AFSCME Council 4. “Governor Rell had fought us by vetoing the bill each time it was passed by the General Assembly. We are very happy to see that she has finally acknowledged the benefits of increased access to quality care and increased savings to employees’ wallets as well as to state and municipal budgets.”

Twice before under the leadership of House Speaker Chris Donovan, the General Assembly had passed and Governor M. Jodi Rell had vetoed bills that would allow municipalities, non-profits, and small businesses to buy into Connecticut’s State employees’ and retirees’ health plan. This year the legislation focused on municipal and school employees gaining access to the pool for prescription drugs. The bill passed both chambers of the legislature with overwhelming approval in part because members of the General Assembly recognized and fought for the potential savings to the state budget and the increased access to quality affordable healthcare that the bill provides for those workers in the state’s cities and towns.

“I’m thrilled that workers like me will be able to save money by joining the pool,” said Karen Pratt-Szilagyi, an employee in Newtown’s Finance Department and the President of the CSEA/SEIU Local 2001 chapter representing the town’s municipal public service workers. “This gives me another choice for buying my families’ prescriptions. The power of bulk purchasing means that we can drive down the high price of expensive medications. Now we need to convince our next governor to support pooling for all of our health insurance costs.”

Skyrocketing health costs and a deepening budget deficit continue to dominate Connecticut’s political debate this election season. SEBAC leadership will join supporters in the legislature to advocate for additional mechanisms to provide more choices and improved benefits for its members while reducing costs for the state’s bottom line in the months and years ahead.

Council 4 and CSEA are two of the 13 unions in the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State workers to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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Public Act 10-131 “An Act Concerning The Purchasing Of Prescription Drugs By Nonstate Public Employers”

Union leaders reiterated the obligation of both parties to negotiate and, if necessary, arbitrate the wisdom of any retirement incentive program, and pressed for information on the impact the governor’s ERIP would have on public services and the state’s already underfunded pension plan. The response of Administration representatives was to storm out of the meeting.

“We’re terribly understaffed already,” said Carmen Boudier, President of New England Healthcare Employees Union, District 1199/SEIU. “We have healthcare workers and corrections officers struggling through mandatory double shifts, and the state trooper force is below its statutory minimum. When bridges are found to need repairs, we don’t even have enough maintenance professionals to repair them,” she said.

Dave Walsh, President of the American Association of University Professors – CCSU, noted that, “college students are struggling to find courses they need to graduate, and we have backups and waiting lists for workers needing job services, and for businesses needing permits to create jobs. Why would the governor want to make a bad situation worse?”

The governor has argued that her ERIP will save the state budget $65 million in the next fiscal year. A drop in the state’s $17 billion annual budget, it would dramatically increase the unfunded liability of the pension plan. The promised savings are also less than the state would save from the coalition’s ‘Jobs for All Working Families’ proposals, which actually improve public services and reduce the unfunded liability.

“I sit on the governor’s Post Employment Benefits Commission, which she created because of her concern over the underfunded pension as well as other costs, such as retiree healthcare,’” said Sal Luciano, Executive Director of Council 4 AFSCME. “I’m stunned that now she proposes to make that liability much worse. It will cost the state at least $1.2 billion in the long-run — clearly not a plan to help the state out of this financial mess,” he said.

In 2009, Governor Rell justified a retirement program by claiming it was a better alternative to layoffs. SEBAC members went on to ratify an agreement that will provide over $900 million in savings to the state before the end of the current budget, and includes concessions in healthcare, wage freezes and furloughs, as well as a retirement incentive. That agreement was by far the greatest contribution by any group towards helping with the state’s budget woes, but needs to be followed by real action by political leaders to address the economic problems that plague the people of our state.

Union leaders expressed concerns that the governor’s call for another ERIP could further destabilize the economy by putting younger pre-retirement workers back into the workforce with incomes that cannot sustain them. The reality is that Connecticut’s people need more jobs, not more jobseekers.

District 1199, AAUP, and Council 4 are four of the thirteen unions in the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State workers to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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Administration’s ‘Proposed Early Retirement Incentive Program 2010′

State Workers ‘Jobs for All Working Families’ Proposals (18-Point Plan)

But the remainder of the cost savings came from still more cuts to public services. While the package contained fewer cuts than what the governor originally proposed, because of her adamant opposition to revenue increases even from multi-millionaires, the plan continues the illusion that we can cut our way out of Connecticut’s economic crisis. The plan does nothing to provide jobs or help struggling families, which leading economists from both sides of the political spectrum have consistently said is what matters most in spurring real long-term recovery.

“It is good to see the governor finally working with legislative leaders towards a common goal,” said Blair Bertaccini, a wage enforcement officer with the Connecticut Department of Labor and president of AFSCME Local 269. “However she really needs to work with legislative leaders on the fundamental economic issue facing the state – jobs. It’s the budgets of the people, not the budget of the state that our elected leaders should be most concerned with,” Bertaccini said

SEBAC members and leadership presented their “Jobs for All Working Families” proposals to Governor M. Jodi Rell and her Administration in January. The plan provided clear and distinct ideas for jump starting Connecticut’s economy, increasing government efficiency, and creating job growth. In the following days of the legislative session, members of SEBAC’s unions will continue to remind political leaders that the people have waited long enough for bold action that will help end the recession not just on Wall Street, but for the working families that make up the vast majority of Connecticut’s people.

“The legislature’s vote is a reminder that Governor Rell and the legislature must work on a serious plan to put people back to work,” said Vincent Steele, a correctional lieutenant with the State Department of Correction. “We cannot afford politicians who play it safe. What we need is an FDR of our time with the wisdom and the courage to lead us toward a more prosperous and economically secure future. What we need are leaders who understand that helping working families improve their budgets is how you balance the state budget. You do that by getting the people of Connecticut back to work,” Steele, a member of CSEA/SEIU Local 2001, said.

The budget did provide one small victory for vital public services in that funding for the licensed practicing nurse program was preserved. This program provides training for LPNs who serve the vulnerable aging in population in Connecticut. It is exactly these types of services, those that impact both the health and well-being of our seniors as well as the economic future of hard working citizens, that SEBAC has and will continue to fight to protect.

Local 269 and CSEA are two of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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State Workers ‘Jobs for All Working Families’ Proposals (18-Point Plan)

“We need a bold vision and real programs to put the people of Connecticut back to work” said Catherine Osten, President of CSEA/SEIU Local 2001. “We tried to provide ideas in our 18-point plan which we presented to the governor’s representatives last week. The governor should be working with the legislature and key stakeholders around the state to make our government into an engine for economic recovery that will put people back to work” she said.

In 2009, members of SEBAC’s unions contributed close to a billion dollars in labor cost savings to help reduce the budget deficit. Last month leaders continued that effort by providing the governor with a long list of win-win ideas to help get the economy growing again. Suggestions included allowing front-line worker to identify efficiencies in State agencies, reducing duplicative bureaucracy, reforming our outdated tax structure, and empowering the State Contracting Standards Board to begin saving taxpayer dollars.

CSEA is one of the thirteen unions in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 45,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition’s campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org.

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State Workers ‘Jobs for All Working Families’ Proposals (18-Point Plan)