A unique panel discussion with local affiliated union leaders on internal organizing was a focal point at AFT Connecticut’s annual convention last month. Five affiliates representing each of our state federation’s jurisdictional divisions were showcased for effectively engaging members early and often to build and maintain strength and maintain density. Together, they provided a blueprint for our labor movement to not just survive, but thrive in a challenging and uncertain legal and political climate.
The 2024 convention brought more than a hundred delegates representing AFT Connecticut’s nearly 34,000 members to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s Foxwoods Hotel Resort. The panel, led by Organizing Director Eric Borlaug (top row, far right, in collage, above), was a first-of-its-kind effort at the annual event to provide participating leaders with tangible training and concrete counsel.
The purpose of the discussion was to share best practices from local unions who have reached and consistently maintained membership density of 90 percent or higher. The goal has been particularly important for our affiliates representing working people in the public sector since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision in 2018.
Click here for our previous report on initial efforts to overcome the impact of the high court ruling.
“As much as Janus created headaches, it’s made us move and be better at our job,” University Health Professionals (UHP) President Bill Garrity, RN (bottom row, right), told delegates. “It’s made us proactive in gathering information on potential members and forced us to use all the tools that are in play to make consistent contact,” he added.
Garrity’s comments were echoed by fellow panelists who additionally stressed the importance of local leaders tapping multiple tactics as part of a “seven asks” approach to recruitment.
Hope Wyatt (top row, middle), the president of our Norwalk Federation of Education Personnel, shared how labor leaders have partnered to support each other’s efforts. “We’ve created a coalition of all district union presidents to work together on common issues like recruitment, to make sure we don’t miss anybody,” she said. “We go right to new hire orientations together and invite new employees to be members.”
Click here for more on how the state’s labor movement is collaborating to engage current and new members.
Administrative & Residual (A&R) Employees Union President John Disette (bottom row, left) credited their success to engaging worksite-level leaders in the mission of recruitment. “We have signed up over 800 new members within the last year and a half,” he told delegates. “We share all new hire data with our stewards so we never lose track of those who’ve not yet joined.”
A private sector union leader on the panel shared how deliberate efforts to broadly increase union participation have helped boost success in their recruitment of new employees, too.
“Recently, our executive board has been getting rank-and-file members more involved,” Backus Federation of Nurses Vice President Danielle Berriault, RN (bottom row, middle), told delegates. “Whether it’s learning about Weingarten rights or taking part in the grievance process – it’s like exercising at the gym and really taking charge of their role in the union.”
Click here for analysis of efforts to resist private sector restrictions like those imposed by the Janus decision.
State Vocational Federation of Teachers President Paul Angelucci (top row, left) stressed the need for fellow labor leaders to “play the long game” when it comes to strengthening their local unions. “It’s about seeing new hires’ potential not just to be members, but to be great activists in the future. That means personally reaching out, making that connection and asking them to step up.”
Collectively, these five union leaders painted a hopeful and inspiring picture of membership engagement and workplace activism in the wake of the Janus decision. They have shown how to effectively overcome the special interests who initially bankrolled the lawsuit in an attempt to hobble America’s labor movement.
Those same forces have spent the past five years exploiting the high court ruling to achieve their aims through a dark money-funded, nationally-coordinated campaign. Earlier this summer, they re-launched an “opt-out” scheme in Connecticut, harvesting local union members’ personal information in order to target them with deceptive propaganda.
Click here for press reporting on our national union’s recent legal success shielding members from these tactics.
The post “Getting Rank-and-File Members More Involved” in Building Power first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Members of AFT Connecticut-affiliated healthcare unions did not rest on their laurels after improving working conditions in 2023. They have since focused on both enforcing a strengthened hospital staffing law while also advocating for additional protections against incidents of violence. In a recently published commentary, state federation Vice President John Brady, RN (second row, third from left, in photo, above), shared how nurses and health professionals have turned their collective action into an “incredible internal organizing tool:”
Connecticut’s staffing legislation went into effect last October, and we’ve been making great progress on our Code Red campaign goals. We have established stronger staffing committees in all eight acute care hospitals that we represent. We’re training committee members on how to participate in meetings and what the committees and staffing plans should look like under the new law.
Click here for Brady’s previous commentary on passage of the strengthened staffing law.
We’re also educating our members more broadly about the legislation. We created a Safe Patient Limits “toolkit” with webinars and additional resources, and we’re working with our national union on a webinar series on staffing committees, including how to use the committees for internal organizing.
Click here for this website’s toolkit section.
We’ve also been working to ensure that hospitals abide by the legislation. The first staffing plans under the new law were submitted to the state on January 1. At five of our hospitals, the administration submitted the plans that our committees developed, voted on, and approved.
At the other three hospitals, the administration refused to submit the committee-approved plans to the state. Instead, perhaps thinking they could get away with subverting the law, they submitted separate plans that had not been approved by the committees. In one of these, William Backus Hospital in Norwich, the meeting minutes that are available to everyone clearly show that the plan passed by the committee is not what the hospital submitted.
Hospitals that violate the law by not meeting their approved staffing numbers 80 percent of the time will face penalties beginning this October, but they must adhere to the other parts of the law – like posting the committee-approved staffing plan- now.
Click here for recent press reporting on hospital administrators refusing to follow the staffing law.
So, we filed complaints against these three hospitals with the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH), the agency enforcing the legislation. Our staffing committee labor co-chair submitted the committee-approved plans to DPH, and regulators are investigating.
We know that DPH will want us to work this out with management at each hospital.
However, these managers are trying to manipulate their way into the ratios that they mistakenly believe are good for their bottom lines. In meetings, they say things like, “this will cause backups in the emergency waiting room; how would you feel if that was your family?”
This is not a capacity issue. Proper staffing ratios improve safety, patient outcomes, and nurse recruitment and retention – and research shows they are good for the bottom line.
Click here for a recent study on the impact of legislation mandating hospitals’ caregiver-to-patient ratios.
Unless we force health chain administrators to staff at levels at which nurses feel safe and able to give patients the care they deserve, nurses will continue to be pushed out of the profession. Our members have pushed back, and we have the majority vote, so we hope DPH will back us up. If they don’t, we have enough friends in the legislature and in the governor’s office to address that.
This year, we are also working on workplace violence, another issue that ties into recruitment and retention. There was a horrible incident last fall when a visiting nurse was murdered during a home visit. There have been other situations where the home care assignment was in a dangerous neighborhood.
We’re lobbying for greater safety measures for our members that include and go beyond adequate staffing.
Click here for press coverage of our healthcare workplace violence advocacy earlier this year.
We need a way to assess potential risks and flag those in patient charts. We also want wider access to the hands-on de-escalation training that tends to be only available for staff in the emergency or psychiatric departments. It should be required for anyone who interacts with patients, whether in clinical or support capacities.
We’re working with a coalition that includes the Connecticut Nurses Association (CNA), other unions in the state and interested legislators to strengthen Connecticut’s existing staff safety legislation.
Editor’s note: the bill received final General Assembly approval eight days after initial publication of Brady’s commentary and was signed by the governor in late May.
Click here for reporting on lawmakers’ passage of the proposal to shield healthcare professionals from violence.
Additionally, Joe Courtney, one of our congressmen, has been working on an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard for workplace violence for years. We are cautiously optimistic that we may get that standard this year.
This Code Red campaign has been an incredible internal organizing tool. Our staffing committees have really owned our new legislation, and we’re going to keep communication channels open so that we know what’s going on at the different hospitals and can learn from each other.
Many Connecticut hospitals are still not unionized. My hope is that through this campaign they see what can happen when people are empowered to use their collective voice – and that they’ll join us so they can make a difference in their hospitals, too.
Click here for Brady’s original commentary published in AFT Health Care.
The post Putting Vital Safety Regulations to Work first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Moving employers from fixating on operating margins to investing in their workforce requires union members to muster a significant show of strength. Engaging, developing and empowering activists is critical to building and sustaining the pressure often needed to secure contractual gains. Our latest collective bargaining wins report highlights a local healthcare union’s recent victory that followed six months of members’ escalation efforts aimed at demonstrating that they were “worth more.”
Before negotiations commenced last December, our AFT Connecticut-affiliated Danbury Nurses Union, Unit 47’s executive board began engaging activists by identifying priority worksite issues to address at the table. They knew from previous experience that winning a strong successor contract with Nuvance Health, the sprawling network that owns their community hospital, would require significant meaningful membership involvement.
“We requested feedback – as well as solutions – to allow nurses to take ownership and feel that their concerns would be heard,” said local union president Janice Stauffer, RN (second from left, in photo above). “That empowered and encouraged several new activists to step up and join our negotiating committee.”
Shortly after talks with Nuvance began, local leaders and AFT Connecticut’s professional staff had organized a Contract Action Team (CAT) that eventually grew to 50 active nurses. Together, they led worksite visibility actions to educate their co-workers and ultimately mobilize for an informational picket outside the acute care facility aimed at generating additional support.
“We believed we are ‘worth more’ than Nuvance was willing to invest in its caregivers,” said Stauffer, an intensive care unit nurse with 23 years of experience at the facility. “We brought that message to our community, and the show of support we received in response was inspiring.”
Click here for press coverage of the late April demonstration at Danbury Hospital.
Shortly after the informational picket, both sides requested the assistance of outside mediation to resolve outstanding contractual issues. There, network executives presented a set of “last, best offer” (LBO) proposals.
The package represented significant economic gains – the highest annual wage increases in more than 12 years, additional salary grade “steps” for veteran nurses and a boost in preceptor pay. Negotiating committee members and AFT Connecticut Field Representative Jorge Cabrera agreed to bring it to the full membership for an up or down vote.
Despite its many gains, the LBO was ratified by the narrowest of margins in early June.
“This was a wakeup call to Nuvance’s administration, who expected overwhelming support for their LBO,” said Stauffer. “It was the right strategy for making real progress today and building for the strength needed in the next round of negotiations.”
Click here for a collage featuring members casting ballots on the LBO.
As part of their long-term education and engagement efforts, Stauffer and fellow union leaders are planning a “contract book club” to regularly review the collective bargaining agreement.
“The goal is to help members to truly understand the contract language over the next three years,” she said. “At the same time, our leadership team will be working closely with AFT Connecticut to see where we need to concentrate to build on the gems we just won.”
We have publicized 15 additional collective bargaining wins since our previous report in March. At press time, two additional local union contract settlements had just been finalized; they are scheduled for initial announcement next week and inclusion in the next quarterly update in September.
Click here for the graphic congratulating our UConn-AAUP members on ratifying their wage reopener agreement with university administration.
Click here for a photo of Federation of Technical College Teachers leaders celebrating their members’ reopener agreement vote.
Click here for the announcement that our UConn Professional Employees Association (UCPEA) members signed-off on their reopener.
Click here for the graphic recognizing ratification of our Association of Connecticut Assistant Attorneys General (AAGs)’s wage reopener.
Click here for the announcement of our Administrative & Residual (A&R) Employees Union members adopting their reopener agreement.
Click here for a collage recognizing our UCHC-AAUP’s bargaining team for their membership’s successful reopener agreement ratification.
Click here for the graphic honoring our CSU-AAUP leaders on their reopener receiving initial sign-off.
Click here for the announcement that our State Vocational Federation of Teachers’ reopener agreement had been ratified.
Click here for the kudos to our University Health Professionals (UHP) members on embracing their wage reopener.
Click here for the announcement of an arbitration win on pay raises for our Judicial Professional Employees (JPE) Union.
Click here for a graphic celebrating final approval of our Canton Federation of Education Personnel members’ successor contract.
Click here for a collage of Vernon Federation of Paraprofessionals members voting for their new collective bargaining agreement.
Click here for a graphic congratulating our Farmington Public School Employees United members on their contract’s final approval.
Click here for the announcement that our Region 18 Federation of Non-Certified Education Personnel members’ agreement was adopted.
Click here for a graphic celebrating our Backus Federation of Nurses’ contract extension that codifies workplace safety legislation.
Editor’s note: our Home Care Plus – South Central CT Union members also ratified a successor collective bargaining agreement during this quarter that was not previously announced.
The post “Making Real Progress Today” while Preparing for the Next Round first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Poverty-level wages and lack of access to family-sustaining benefits have long contributed to a shortage of paraeducators needed to assure effective student learning. Ashley Stockton (front row, third from left, in photo above), a trustee in our AFT Connecticut-affiliated New Haven Federation of Teachers, urged elected officials to invest in these vital members of the school community in a recent op-ed. She called for real solutions respecting the vital, and often unappreciated, work of paras “in the form of fair wages and working conditions:”
Our paraeducators matter. Simply, our schools can not function without them. They are some of our most valuable employees, and yet their pay and working conditions telegraph just the opposite.
Currently our paras are hired at about $24,000 a year. Their hourly wage is about $16. I have two kids who are New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students - a rising senior and a rising freshman. For the jobs they perform, neighborhood dog walking, yard work, snow shoveling, they are paid no less than $20 an hour. Let that sink in.
Click here for our latest report on progress in lifting Connecticut’s paras out of poverty.
At a recent Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Madeline Negrón shared her goals for NHPS kindergarten as one part of her strategic plan. Her goals are admirable and ambitious. Meeting these goals will require individualized assessment, targeted interventions, consistent progress monitoring, and structured instruction that utilizes the science of reading mechanisms that are proven to help emergent readers meet development benchmarks.
Implementation of an instructional model that encompasses these facets requires small group instruction, daily. Facilitating this requires teachers and paras working together to manage the classroom, meet the needs of the children, and deliver individualized learning plans. We can say that we are doing this, but in reality, without paras, one teacher cannot meet the needs of 26 young people as effectively as they could with a properly staffed classroom.
Click here for testimony submitted earlier this year in support of state legislation aimed at para staffing shortages.
Our paras do more than anyone can imagine. I know this because I am a kindergarten teacher and have been a teacher in NHPS since 2006 (Stockton works at Truman School in the Elm City). I have observed paras year after year, taking one for the team, being good soldiers, call it what you may. In short, our paras roll up their sleeves, do whatever needs to be done, and show up the next day to do it all over again. They help children pour milk into their cereal, listen to fears and wipe tears, teach children how to grip a pencil, sit beside them while children read to them, and provide our strugglers with the support and compassion they need in order to feel included.
When they are told to, paras leave their kindergarteners and provide coverage for absent teachers in eighth grade, fifth grade, phys ed, wherever they are needed. The work they do each day is gracious and beautiful and for that we should be thankful. Our thanks needs to come in the form of fair wages and working conditions.
Click here for a collage featuring union members urging state lawmakers allocate resources for recruiting and retaining paras.
This is long past overdue.
I am heartbroken listening to our paras at the Board of Education meeting after meeting. In a nutshell, they repeat the same message: “We love our job. Please pay us a living wage.” In addition to their jobs, paras perform the following duties: substitute teaching for all grades and content areas, covering long term leaves for teachers who are on administrative, family, or medical leaves, covering the front office of their schools, performing nursing responsibilities, supervising lunch waves, and countless other responsibilities. Often they are told with no notice and no choice.
They perform these duties because someone must. Without our paras, our schools wouldn’t make it through a day. It’s about time we show them that they and their contributions are seen and valued.
Click here for press reporting on the latest efforts to avert looming NHPS staff layoffs.
Finally, I want to share a few things I saw paras do this past week. I saw kindergarten paras substitute teach third grade, administer one-on-one math diagnostics during their lunch break, buy bubbles, pails and shovels for kindergarteners to use at recess, tuck prizes into backpacks for children to find once they got home, bring in popsicles on a Friday afternoon because the children had cooperated so beautifully all week. I could keep writing, but there just isn’t enough space to list it all. These are our paras, New Haven. They matter.
Click here for Stockton’s original published op-ed in New Haven Independent.
The post Showing Solidarity and Urging Respect for Valued Colleagues first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
In the final hours of the General Assembly’s 2024 session, labor activists and students secured an infusion of resources into the state’s public higher education. Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox (in screenshot, above), a council member in our AFT Connecticut affiliated CSU-AAUP, laid out the case for action in an op-ed published just days before. He made a compelling argument for supporting “students individualized instruction in an accessible, nurturing, small school environment:”
I’ve worked with many nontraditional students during my time as a professor at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU, where Gadkar-Wilcox co-chairs the Department of History and World Perspectives). As the number of nontraditional students at colleges across the country continues to rise, I worry about our state’s ability to serve them with our public colleges and universities.
One of my early students was of Lebanese descent. She had a hard time finding her way at WCSU and struggled at first in classes on subjects that were not relevant to her. But when she discovered our offerings in Asian and Middle Eastern history and culture, something clicked. She became one of our best students and went on to a career in education and administration in the United Arab Emirates.
Another nontraditional student I taught wanted desperately to come back to school but had young children. Fortunately, she was able to take advantage of WCSU’s Child Care (later Early Learning) Center to drop off her young children while attending class. She told me several times that she could not have graduated without this outstanding feature of WCSU.
These are only two examples of students who enrolled at WCSU, graduated, and thrived because of programs that no longer exist – products of the consistent under-funding of Connecticut’s state universities. We have not offered courses in Middle Eastern history since 2020. Arabic is now offered only through independent study. Our Child Care Center closed in 2019, part of an earlier round of budget cuts.
Click here for national press reporting on the student learning crisis at WCSU created by austerity policies.
Now, the state has proposed another round of cuts to our system’s funding. The system has made it clear that without additional state funding, we will see more cuts to our services, programs, and staff. The Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) Board of Regents (BOR) already voted to raise tuition by five percent starting in September.
This comes at a time when our enrollments are beginning to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. The working class and nontraditional students of our state are looking for affordable higher education options, especially in the Danbury area, where enrollment in public schools is steadily growing.
Click here for reporting on the BOR’s move to pass the cuts on to students and their families.
The impact of the budget cuts can be seen everywhere. Students struggle to find the courses that they need. Our student services are operating at perilously low staffing levels. Our library currently has five faculty members, down from 11 just three years ago, and cannot assist lower-division undergraduates with library instruction because of understaffing.
I’m proud to have taught at WCSU for nearly 20 years. I know we are a hidden gem. We are a great school with a dedicated faculty and staff. We are committed to giving students individualized instruction in an accessible, nurturing, small school environment. But we cannot make good on that commitment unless we have sufficient resources.
As a professor and member of the CSU faculty union, CSU-AAUP, I’m calling on our state’s leaders to find a way to fully fund the CSCU system. We are hopeful that the legislature will provide additional needed support.
Click here for reporting on the resources lawmakers allocated to public higher education before the General Assembly adjourned.
Our students will make up the future of Connecticut. They deserve affordable, high quality higher education.
Click here for Gadkar-Wilcox’s original published op-ed at CT Viewpoints.
The post Embracing Real Solutions for All Who Depend on Us first appeared on AFT Connecticut.
Carol Gale, President
Corey Moses, First Vice-President
Stuart Beckford, Second Vice-President
