A couple of bills that will make job creation even harder in Connecticut

’Tis the season for TV commercials from the many special interests telling us why we should favor this bill or shun that one. Unions representing teachers have been especially active in fighting proposed reforms aimed at retaining the best teachers without regard for seniority. But my favorite commercial is the one with the waitress proudly saying she doesn’t serve flu with her lunches because her boss pays her to stay home when she’s sick. The ad supports an arguably worthy, but terribly ill-timed bill requiring businesses with 50 or more employees to pay full- and part-time workers when they’re sick or say they’re sick. About 60 percent of private sector companies, mostly large ones, voluntarily pay sick workers. Others say they can’t afford to and some probably can’t.Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has introduced similar federal legislation seeking the same requirement for companies with at least 15 workers, so you could say the state bill is more business friendly. The ad with the flu-free waitress has one shortcoming. It isn’t quite upfront about the bill, which covers all businesses, not just restaurants and health-care facilities, as the commercial seems to say. The bill’s sponsors probably figured it’s scarier to talk about sick workers sneezing on your dinner than sick accountants sneezing on your tax returns or sick widget makers coughing on the widgets. The commercial is sponsored by “a broad coalition of public health professionals, women’s advocates, union members, faith leaders, small business owners and concerned citizens” but appears to be dominated by unions like American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, Communication Workers, United Auto Workers, Greater New Haven Labor Council and one union representing food handlers, United Food and Commercial Workers.Non-union backers include the Connecticut Medical Society, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission, National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut and a couple of religious groups. There were no small business owners listed.Whatever its merits, this is truly not legislation that cries out for passage in this difficult economic environment. Nor is it exactly emergency legislation, since Connecticut has done without this kind of worker protection during quite a few decades of passing pro-labor laws. And so have 49 other states.Yes, 49. If Connecticut passes what will certainly be perceived as another anti-business law, Connecticut will stand alone, at least for a while. We’d still be last in job creation, however, a record Connecticut has held since 1989. Also working its way through the Legislature is a so-called “captive audience” bill that would prohibit employers from holding paid meetings with workers to discuss unions, politics or religion. Politics and religion are smoke screens; it’s all about meetings to head off union organizers. Connecticut wouldn’t be the first state to prohibit such meetings, which are allowed under federal law, but it would be the second. Similar bills were passed in Oregon and Wisconsin but the Wisconsin law has already been declared unconstitutional. So why should the Legislature go out of its way to pass anti-business laws in a state that’s been 50th, also known as last, in job creation for two decades?Could it be that the Democratic majority, facing an election next year and keenly aware of labor’s displeasure with the way things are going in the current session, wants to do something nice for its erstwhile allies? Could be.Passage of the bills is far from certain. Should it pass, the captive audience bill may turn out to be unconstitutional. And the champion of the paid sick day bill, Labor Committee Chairwoman Edith (Hang’em High) Prague, thinks the sick day bill is in trouble and is talking compromise. The bill could end up exempting manufacturing jobs and concentrate on sneezing service workers. We’ll see. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less