AFT Connecticut advocates for legislation and a state budget that protect and improve the rights, safety, and quality of life for all of its members.
The 2012 session convenes on February 8th and adjourns on May 9th. The following are AFT Connecticut’s union-wide priorities:
- Working for a fair budget that includes adequate funding for state services, PK-16 education & higher education and all state funded pensions, and acute care hospital funding.
- Preventing efforts to reduce services by capping taxes and/or spending at either the state or municipal level.
- Fighting efforts to privatize state or municipal services, including public education.
- Stopping efforts to weaken the binding arbitration process for state employees, teachers and municipal employees.
- Incorporating the history of organized labor and the collective bargaining process into the state’s academic curriculum standards.
Our union will also work on the following legislative issues that affect each constituency group during the 2011 legislative session:
PRE-K-12 COUNCIL
- Protect funding for CommPACT schools in FY 2013.
- Adopt statewide teacher evaluation standards that require and institute collaboration between teachers and administrators and training to those who evaluate teachers.
- Monitor efforts that would require decisions to layoff teachers be made without regard to seniority.
- Block efforts to use public funds to establish private school vouchers and provide tax credits for businesses that contribute to private schools.
- Monitor potential changes to the School Governance Council statute.
- Monitor recommendations from the Program Review & Investigation Committee’s study on the Educator Professional Standards Board.
- Work with the Office of Policy & Management to create a seat on the Teachers’ Retirement Board for AFT Connecticut.
- Monitor interim recommendations from the ECS Task Force.
- Monitor recommendations from the High School Graduation Issues Task Force, the Vocational Technical System Review Task Force and the Achievement Gap Task Force.
PSRP COUNCIL
- Protect the State Department of Education’s Paraprofessional Professional Development Advisory Council and restore its funding.
- Reduce the number of hours full-time paraprofessionals are required to work in order to be eligible to receive Family Medical Leave (FMLA) benefits.
HEALTHCARE COUNCIL
- Require that every school district maintain a staffing ratio of qualified school nurses (RNs) appropriate to the size and acuity of its student population in order to promote a healthy learning environment where students can achieve.
- Monitor the recommendations of the Childhood Immunization Task Force and require that school administrators and superintendents enforce statutory mandates that require children to be vaccinated before they are allowed to attend public school.
- Monitor attempts to create for-profit community hospitals.
STATE EMPLOYEES COUNCIL
- Pass card check recognition for public sector workers who choose to unionize (pending approval of the AFL-CIO Legislative Committee).
- Monitor efforts to create an Office of Administrative Hearings.
- Enact workers’ compensation, disability, discrimination, pension and other protections for employees who work in “sick buildings.”
- Monitor the state’s block grant to the University of Connecticut and the issues related to the progression of the Jackson Labs project.
- Protect the University of Connecticut Health Center’s fringe benefit differential in the Comptroller’s budget.
- Monitor legislation that addresses workplace bullying in state service.
- Monitor the release of approved bonding funds, including those for technical high school renovations.
- Adjust ethics restrictions to allow state employees to reasonably utilize services provided by technical high school students.
RETIREE COUNCIL
- Incorporating the history of organized labor and the collective bargaining process into the state’s academic curriculum standards.
- Monitor attempts to create for-profit community hospitals.
- Enact workers’ compensation, disability, discrimination, pension and other protections for employees who work in “sick buildings.”
A Guide for Reaching State Legislators and Testifying at Public Hearings
How a State Bill Becomes Law
Frequently Asked Questions About the State Legislature