Connecticut’s largest labor federation has endorsed Gov. Ned Lamont for a third term — and handed him a wish list for the next four years.
Connecticut AFL-CIO President Ed Hawthorne identified three priorities in an interview with Mike Cerulli, writer of the Capitol Report Tip Sheet: an omnibus labor bill every year, looser fiscal guardrails and a strong state employee contract.
The federation represents roughly 250,000 active and retired union members.
“Third-term Ned” is Hawthorne’s phrase. After Lamont vetoed a 2025 bill that would have allowed striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, Hawthorne contrasted the governor’s two terms. “First-term Ned Lamont,” he said, supported paid family and medical leave and minimum-wage increases. “Second-term Ned” vetoed the labor-backed bill.
Hawthorne now hopes a third-term Lamont will sign more legislation like H.B. 5003. Pointing to the 124-page omnibus labor bill Lamont signed this year, he told Cerulli, “More of that.”
H.B. 5003 combined 75 sections covering workers’ compensation, wage disclosures, cannabis workers, higher education, public-safety benefits, housing assistance and service contracts.
Some provisions gained bipartisan support. Others imposed new requirements or potential costs on employers, state agencies, and municipalities. Lawmakers nevertheless had to accept or reject the package as a whole.
A legislator who supported benefits for an assaulted teacher but opposed a new employer mandate still had to cast one vote covering both. The roll call shows only whether each lawmaker voted for or against the bill — not which provisions each one supported.
Hawthorne does not merely want that process repeated. He wants it to be a yearly tradition.
Sen. Rob Sampson (R-Wolcott), the ranking Senate Republican on the Labor and Public Employees Committee, said Hawthorne had “said the quiet part out loud.”
Sampson called H.B. 5003 “a grab bag of overreaching mandates” and rejected Hawthorne’s call for an annual version.
“Connecticut doesn’t need an annual labor-union wish list rammed through the legislature,” Sampson said. “We need a thriving economic environment that respects workers, employers, consumers, and taxpayers alike, and recognizes the simple economic reality that you cannot mandate your way to prosperity.”
Hawthorne also told Cerulli he wants “looser fiscal guardrails,” although he did not identify what he wants changed.
The Connecticut AFL-CIO’s 2026 agenda calls those rules “fiscal roadblocks.” The federation argues that changing them would make state taxes more equitable and allow existing surpluses to finance education, housing, child care, health care, long-term care and state-agency staffing.
Those are ongoing expenses, but the revenue may not be. Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails include limits on spending growth and restrictions on how temporary or unpredictable revenue may be used.
One rule limits how much investment-related tax revenue lawmakers can spend. Money above that limit goes to the Budget Reserve Fund (BRF) and, once reserves are full, toward state debt and pensions.
Raising the limit would let lawmakers spend more of that money now, leaving less for reserves and debt. If the revenue later falls, taxpayers could still be responsible for the programs created with it.
Hawthorne has not said whether that is the tradeoff he wants or which guardrail he would change. Until he does, “looser fiscal guardrails” is less a policy proposal than a request for permission to spend more.
The AFL-CIO’s third request is a “strong state employee contract.”
Hawthorne did not define the phrase. The current statewide pension-and-health agreement between the administration and the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) expires June 30, 2027.
SEBAC — not the AFL-CIO — will negotiate the next contract, though the two coalitions’ memberships overlap. Nearly 300 SEBAC representatives met in June to prepare for negotiations. CSEA SEIU Local 2001 has already laid out its priorities: “fixing” Tier IV, protecting health benefits, strengthening hazardous-duty benefits and defending telework.
Most pension-eligible employees hired on or after July 31, 2017, enter Tier IV, which combines a traditional pension with a defined-contribution component. Its risk-sharing provision can require employees to contribute more when investment returns fall short.
Union leaders now say the plan pays too little and places too much risk on employees — even though 83 percent of votes cast and 15 of SEBAC’s 16 unions supported the 2017 agreement that created it.
No detailed proposal or fiscal analysis has been released, so no one can put a price on “fixing” Tier IV. The latest valuation left the State Employees Retirement System $17.6 billion short and only 59.6 percent funded. Since then, another $685.1 million has been deposited into the fund.
Across the state employee and teachers’ pension systems, Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails have produced more than $11 billion in additional contributions over seven years.
Now the AFL-CIO wants the guardrails loosened, while SEBAC unions want to reopen the pension terms they approved in 2017. One demand will keep Connecticut’s existing pension debt on the books longer, increasing what taxpayers pay over time. The other will add new costs before the old ones are gone.
