The shutdown of the federal government this fall was largely due to the failure of the White House and the majority party in Congress to address a looming healthcare crisis. Before the stalemate ended, Heather Brauth, RN (at podium, in photo, above) demanded action at the U.S. Capitol and in a recently published op-ed. The president of our AFT Connecticut-affiliated Backus Federation of Nurses sounded the alarm for her patients, warning elected officials that prolonged neglect means that “some will die:”
As a surgical nurse at a small hospital in Norwich, I work hard to give my patients the best possible care because that’s what they deserve.
That’s hard enough to do with a health care system that’s as strained as it is now. My fear is that it will become much worse. That’s why I traveled to Washington, D.C., recently to speak at a news conference and hearing with House Democrats.
A health care crisis is just around the corner because of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, an ugly law enacted by Republicans in Congress and the Trump White House last summer. This partisan law slashed Medicaid and allowed the Affordable Care Act healthcare tax credits to expire for working families — all while funding tax breaks for billionaires.
That’s great if you have money. But it’s going to make life harder and more expensive for everyone else, including more than 100,000 people in Connecticut who will face higher premiums if the tax credits expire.
Already, our small community hospital has had one of the busiest years to date. And with cold and flu season ahead, healthcare workers are gearing up for the worst respiratory virus season we have seen since COVID-19 in 2020.
We have a nursing shortage. It currently takes months to see primary care providers, and forget about getting an appointment with a specialist in under six to 12 months. We have patients sleeping overnight on stretchers in our emergency rooms and waiting on stretchers in hallways for other patients to be discharged.
It’s clear that the cuts coming down the pike have the capacity to dismantle and destabilize our currently understaffed and struggling healthcare system. Hospitals and clinics will close or cut essential services, forcing patients to travel farther and wait longer for care. Up to 15 million people could eventually lose their healthcare coverage, and millions more will see their healthcare premiums increase.
People can’t afford groceries right now. How do we expect them to afford significant rate increases to their health insurance?
And we know that rural communities will face higher premium increases than other communities if the healthcare tax credits are allowed to expire. Nationally, nearly a quarter of farmers and ranchers get healthcare coverage through plans supported by these tax credits. Entire communities will be devastated if the politicians in charge of Congress and the White House don’t take action.
The frontline health care workers are scared. Anyone who is concerned about their own health or a loved one’s health should be as well.
Asking our friends and neighbors who can’t afford food or rent to pay, on average, more than double for their health insurance premiums is going to force people off their health insurance. And that won’t stop people from needing emergency care, regardless of whether they live in a blue or a red community. Communities will suffer. People will get sicker. It’s not at all a stretch to say that some will die.
But instead of working with Democrats to lower health care costs, Republicans shut down the government and took a vacation. Many of our patients are hardworking Americans who are about to receive notice that they are losing the tax credit that allows them to afford health care — and Republicans are OK with that.
Republicans control Congress and the White House. They should return to D.C. and do their jobs. They should end this government shutdown and work with Democrats to rescue the healthcare that’s now at risk. Our patients and communities deserve no less.
Editor’s note: The federal government funding agreement signed into law on November 12 did not resolve the issue of expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium subsidies; photo credit to Nicole Guadiano, AFT.
The post Warning Politicians that Inaction has Consequences first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Study after study has found that family-friendly policies improve performance by increasing productivity, morale and loyalty while also reducing absenteeism, turnover and “brain drain.” In a recently published op-ed, a member of our AFT Connecticut-affiliated UConn-AAUP chapter called out her employer’s failure to ensure access to paid parental leave for all of its workforce. Associate Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology Sara Hird (at right, in photo, above) urged University of Connecticut officials to right this wrong and “to believe in a better future:”
When I was two to three weeks postpartum (living in California), I was at home with a seemingly healthy baby but I was falling apart.
I was getting less than 90 minutes of sleep at a time (because my baby had lost “too much” weight and I was told to feed him every 90 minutes around the clock); post-partum depression made it feel like breastfeeding a baby for the next six months was functionally equivalent to infinity and I thought I would never smile again; I had a seven inch incision healing across my lower abdomen and an itchy rash all over my body from a reaction to the anesthetic of the c-section.
What medicine for me would be safe for the baby? Did I have mastitis? Did I eat anything today? Why is he crying? Why isn’t he crying? Why am I crying? Ah yes, because my nipples are bleeding.
Difficult postpartum experiences like mine are common following the birth of a child. Put simply: recovering from birth takes time. Bonding with a newborn takes time. Adjusting to the new reality of parenthood takes time. But these investments provide the foundations for healthy families and productive workers.
I started at the University of Connecticut with a 1- and a 2-year-old and was shocked to hear stories from faculty who had babies here. Some were back in front of a classroom before I would have even been cleared to lift my baby (the incision hadn’t healed). One faculty member was on campus when his wife fell down the stairs carrying their newborn. Another had only one day off teaching before being back in a classroom – while his newborn twins were in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in New Haven. Yet another was at the emergency room in another state with their adoptive 3-day-old son while teaching her classes, abruptly moving them online but without interruption.
I have personally heard dozens of similar stories from UConn faculty spanning departments and decades and they all share this in common: UConn professors get zero days of guaranteed paid family leave.
UConn currently lets every pregnant/expecting individual reinvent the wheel, cobbling together a leave plan with whatever resources and departmental grace they can muster. The bottom line is that no person recovering from birth should take on the task of leading a classroom of college students. Because even standard new parent difficulties like spit-up-on-my-shirt-has-made-me-late or sleep-deprivation-has-muddled-my-brain can negatively affect students.
And while insufficient parental leave is suboptimal for students, for new parents it is downright cruel. And what do we gain from this cruelty? We get worse educators in the classroom, less creative and less productive scientists in the lab, unreliable committee members and poor decision makers.
The administrators at UConn are guaranteed 12 weeks of paid family leave. The graduate students at UConn are guaranteed six weeks of paid leave (birthing parent). Connecticut state law ensures all workers get 12 weeks paid family leave but UConn professors are exempt from that law because of our union. I’ll say it again: UConn professors get nothing. Zero guaranteed paid family leave.
The paid part is essential. New professors, frequently people of prime ages for starting or growing a family, have spent years on stipends and low postdoctoral salaries, likely moved across the country for their job multiple times, and thus may have started their faculty position with little to no savings.
Good professors leave UConn for a lack of family leave and resources – after we’ve invested substantial funds in their salaries and research groups. With a humane and robust and automatic (meaning, not dependent on someone judging then approving of your need) family leave policy, UConn could recruit and retain faculty of the highest caliber, while simultaneously creating a community that supports families. Everyone – from newborns to the elderly – needs care at some point. Minimizing the bureaucracy involved with meeting that need benefits us all.
This has been a fight on parents’ radars for decades but various local and national crises always let it fade into the background. Families are the fundamental unit of society and we cannot let this go any longer. Yes, it will cost money. But that’s what society is for. To invest in, to believe in a better future.
UConn President Radenka Maric’s email signature claims: “Our expert researchers, faculty, staff, and alumni drive Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (CIE) for a better tomorrow. We fuel the State’s economy and are committed to inclusion with emotional intelligence in benefiting the greater good. This is UConn. STUDENTS FIRST, UCONN ALWAYS. HUSKIES FOREVER.”
The moral, ethical and humane choice for a better tomorrow that benefits the greater good through inclusion and emotional intelligence (that also puts students first) is obvious: professors deserve guaranteed paid family leave. Yes. “This is UConn.” But it could and should be better.
The post Standing Up for Paid Parental Leave for All first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Full recovery from the impact of the Great Recession has yet to be experienced broadly or equitably in all our state’s communities. Many schools – particularly in urban centers – still face funding shortfalls that weigh heavily on the workforce by depressing pay, degrading benefits and eroding job security. Our latest collective bargaining wins report highlights an AFT Connecticut-affiliated PreK-12 union whose members moved district officials to turn away from austerity and instead embrace investment.
Following years of painful staff and service cuts, teachers in Ansonia Public Schools have ratified two successor contracts, yielding significant economic gains and greater job security. The latest agreement was reached in late August and builds on starting salary boosts won in the previous round of negotiations.
“At our lowest point, when the mayor and former superintendent were at odds, our middle school lost one-third of our staff,” said Ansonia Federation of Teachers President Mat Hough (right, back row, in photo, above).
While all of Connecticut’s urban districts endured layoffs and closures during the Great Recession, Ansonia’s learning crisis was further exacerbated by the actions of its own municipal elected leaders. When the “Copper City’s” mayor hoarded state-appropriated funds earmarked for students, our union members joined local school board officials to hold him accountable by taking him to court.
“Since then, we’ve helped bring about a Renaissance,” added Hough. “So far this year, we’ve cut turnover in half and retained all but three teachers in the middle school.”
In January of 2023, Hough, along with his fellow negotiating committee members and AFT Connecticut Field Representative Ben Wenograd (second from left, back row, above), moved district officials to extend their then-current contract. They additionally succeeded in restructuring the pay scale and securing the first salary increases following years of freezes, laying the groundwork for the further gains they made this summer.
“The last two contracts have allowed us to keep staff and recruit highly skilled veteran teachers to fill vacancies,” added Hough. “At the middle school, where I teach, our staff has become a family. We know we have each other’s backs and that is how we will succeed – by sticking together.”
The latest agreement further restructures the pay scale with new “steps” for veteran members in each of its three years. Annual increases in the final two, as well as boosted stipends for excessive bus duty coverage and extra preparations, will benefit all. The contract additionally keeps members’ healthcare premium share costs far below the current rate of inflation.
Negotiating committee members said their successive contract victories send a message to educators in districts still dealing with chronic underfunding: one of hope and inspiration.
“Hang in there – real progress can happen,” said member Stephanie Parker (seated, in front, above). “When educators stick together through their union and keep speaking up for what’s right, things start to change. Every small win adds up, and before you know it, you’re seeing real investment in your schools, your students and your profession.”
Union members overwhelmingly ratified the tentative agreement in late September, and Ansonia’s full board of education codified it earlier this month. The contract’s provisions are set to take effect on July 1, 2026.
Seven additional collective bargaining wins have been announced since our previous report in July:
Natchaug Hospital Unions United – Educators Chapter Watertown Federation of Paraprofessionals Meriden Federation of Municipal Employees Meriden Federation of Education Secretaries Mitchell College Faculty Federation New Britain Federation of Paraeducators Newtown Federation of TeachersAt press time, six additional settled local union contracts that had not yet been publicized were tentatively planned for inclusion in a future update.
The post Leading the Drive to “Bring About a Renaissance” first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Patients and students – as well as the providers and instructors they depend on – are suffering the consequences of the White House’s painful funding reductions and shameful political patronage. In a recently published op-ed, the executive committee of our AFT Connecticut-affiliated UCHC-AAUP (in collage, above) urged state lawmakers to shield residents from the escalating harm. They called for the resources needed to make up for Washington’s shortfalls and ensure their academic medical center’s mission to “promote equity and diversity and community health:”
We write today to express deep concern over the recent White House executive orders and federal legislation elevating political appointees’ influence in grants, cutting funds for critical research, and slashing Medicaid funds.
These actions threaten academic freedom, higher education, healthcare, and Connecticut’s economy. They are compounded by the $61.5 million cut to UConn Health (UCH) in the most recent state budget.
Our elected officials must take swift action to protect the public good by allocating the resources needed to shore up Connecticut’s only public medical academic center.
The new executive order replaces expert peer review with political oversight, jeopardizing expert scrutiny and credible science while dismissing dozens of National Institutes of Health (NIH) reviewers, thus replacing the integrity and autonomy of scientific merit as they navigate an ever-changing political agenda. Critical fields like health equity, vaccine studies, reproductive health, gender studies, and LGBTQ issues are being defunded, undermining research that serves our communities.
The repercussions are already being felt at UConn Health. In April, NIH cancelled $1.7 million in unspent UConn research grants, including mental health and LGBTQ+ projects. A proposed slash of indirect cost reimbursement to a flat 15% threatens $35 million annually. Infrastructure, administrative support, equipment and labs employing nearly 750 research positions, including graduate students, postdocs, and clinician-scientists, face immediate risk.
Federal legislation will cut or eliminate some Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax subsidies and reduce the number of eligible Medicaid/Medicare enrollees by as much as 20%, resulting in devastating losses for the University of Connecticut Health Center and our patients. Patients will lose access to primary care and rely more on costly emergency services – a devastating result for patient health and UCHC’s infrastructure. The anticipated direct loss from changes to Medicaid/Medicare to UCHC alone is $25 to $40 million. Additionally, this level of disenrollment jeopardizes UCHC’s 340B program eligibility, the loss of which could be between $49–$69 million.
The stakes extend well beyond our campus. In fiscal year 2024, NIH funding awarded $787 million to Connecticut institutions, impacting 6,831 jobs, and $1.78 billion in economic activity. These cuts endanger our research infrastructure and talent pool, pushing researchers to go elsewhere, hindering our ability to recruit top talent which can lead to a “brain drain.” The consequences include dampening state-generated innovation, threatening as many as 2,650 jobs in our state that depend on federal research funding tied to UConn and UCHC.
These federal measures erode and disregard academic freedom, disciplines that promote equity and diversity and community health.
In closing, we strongly and passionately urge our lawmakers to act now and convene a special session of the General Assembly to:
Support UConn Health, the state’s only public hospital, as we step up to meet the growing demands of patients as more and more become uninsured; and Allocate funds to UConn and UCH to offset state and federal cuts, especially for essential but stigmatized research and patient care to the most vulnerable.Editor’s note: the executive committee members are Ion Moraru, MD, PhD, President (top, left, in collage, above), Neena Qasba, MD, MPH, Vice President (top, second from left), Mark Maciejewski, PhD, Secretary-Treasurer (top, second from right), Michael Baldwin, MD (top, right), Alix Deymier, PhD, (bottom, left), Ruchir Trivedi, MD (bottom, second from left), Irina Bezsonova, PhD (bottom, second from right), and Laura Haynes, PhD (bottom, right).
The post Resisting Brutal Budgeting and Crippling Cuts first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
“The professors are the enemy” may have seemed like little more than a vulgar political slur, but in 2025, it underpins a destructive policy agenda. The hostile and threatening climate was top of mind for the hundreds of faculty and staff at our national union’s annual higher education conference. Leaders and activists from Connecticut traveled to Atlanta in mid July to focus on building the power needed in these precarious times to defend themselves, students and communities.
The 2025 Summer Institute, jointly organized by our national American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and AFT, was held on the historic Morehouse College campus. Members and staff with state federation-affiliated higher education chapters joined their colleagues from across the country for four days of workshops and plenaries addressing the monumental challenges facing the profession.
“Every day, increment by increment, we’re losing our democracy,” said Oskar Harmon (left, in collage above), who serves as treasurer of our AFT Connecticut-affiliated UConn-AAUP. “That’s why we came: to organize, engage in community support and learn new techniques to advance this cause. Our charge was to go back to our universities and talk to our colleagues, our legislators and then to national organizations. That’s what we motivated and prepared ourselves to do,” he added.
National AAUP President Todd Wolfson’s opening remarks on the first day of the conference magnified the partnership between the two organizations and the tremendous opportunity in this unprecedented moment. He urged the largest gathering of higher education activists across the country since the 2022 affiliation of our unions to build a powerful and resilient movement.
The second day featured a morning plenary on moving members into action, followed by a variety of workshops on a wide range of timely topics. Participants packed lecture halls to learn how to defend historically black colleges and universities, build solidarity through shared governance and thwart escalating attempts to curtail academic freedom.
“We’re studying the evolving landscape and producing resources to support faculty,” said Trinity AAUP Chapter President and AAUP Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom Director Isaac Kamola (right, above). “We have a full syllabus with readings and we’ve also produced what we’re calling a ‘first aid kit.’ There, we have resources to protect faculty from threats, curated legal resources, like immigration lawyers, as well as digital security and doxing defenses,” he added.
National AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram presented during the afternoon plenary, calling on attendees to expand their vision during these tumultuous times. He reminded members of their obligation as activists, quoting the 19th-century abolitionist and civil rights pioneer, Frederick Douglass: “power concedes nothing without demand.”
The agenda for day three of the conference was packed with three plenary sessions and 11 workshops, several of which focused on empowering leaders to organize members around priority issues. Topics ranged from defending vulnerable students and colleagues to bargaining for the common good and winning pro-higher education state-level legislation.
National AFT President Randi Weingarten participated in the lunch plenary, which took on the weighty issue of “Democratic Backsliding and How We Resist It.” She was joined by Faith in Action National Network Political Director Cassandra Gould, Horizons Project Co-Lead Maria Stephan and Human Rights Campaign Social Advocate Erica McPheeters.
Together, they warned against attempts to allow divisions between PreK-12 and higher education, pointing out that both are targets because of the power in teaching knowledge, agency and empowerment. Critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, resilience and relationship-building all threaten the rise of authoritarian regimes.
I co-led the afternoon plenary and a workshop, each aimed at teaching communications and organizing skills to leaders and activists. In the first, I shared the success achieved last year by AFT Connecticut affiliates and labor coalition partners in fending off privatization of the state’s only public medical academic center. The second focused on developing and implementing effective public relations strategies.
Members got even more active with a hands-on mass mobilization training on the last day of the conference, learning tactics for successful, nonviolent demonstrations. AFT Union Leadership Institute Deputy Director Darrell Capwell teamed up with Lisa Fithian from the Alliance of Community Trainers to lead participants through de-escalation techniques and real-world scenarios.
“We’re going to escalate and we’re going to activate more and more members,” said CSU-AAUP member Rotua Lumbantobing (center, above). “We’re going to keep growing density and we’re going to build our capacity to be a fighting union. There will be rallies and protests but we also have to build relationships. We need our coalition partners, our communities and – most importantly – our students,” added Lumbantobing, who also serves as AAUP’s national vice president.
Whether it’s in the streets, at the bargaining table or organizing through one-on-one conversations, Summer Institute participants left both inspired and equipped to meet the moment.
Editor’s note: additional contributions from Virginia Myers, AFT.
The post Leaning Into Organizing as Resistance first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
