Malloy Touts Labor Credentials
by Hugh McQuaid | May 3, 2012 1:31pm
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Posted to: Labor, State Capitol
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Gov. Dannel P. Malloy
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s relationship with the labor community that helped get him elected has been rocky at times. But his message to a group of nearly 200 construction workers Thursday was clear — “We do not have to agree on every political issue every time, but we can never be divided.”
Malloy’s comments came during something of a victory lap celebrating the Senate’s late-night passage of a bill allowing public entities to negotiate working conditions with labor unions before a construction project goes up for bidding.
The bill was expected to be controversial but found support even among most Republican senators Wednesday night because its language on Project Labor Agreements was permissive.
The governor received a warm welcome from the unionized construction workers, even as his sweeping education reform proposal remains a point of bitter contention among the state’s teachers unions.
“Before Gov. Malloy, we couldn’t get within 100 yards of the governor’s office. Now we have a seat in the governor’s office. He’s a friend,” said David Roche, president of the State Building & Construction Trades Council.
Malloy took the opportunity to tout his labor credentials, saying his office helped draft the PLA language for the bill. He also pointed to his efforts to give new groups of workers the right to collectively bargain. He said Connecticut stood in stark contrast to the anti-labor sentiment present in other states.
“Where there is a broad assault on the right of men and women to organize, a broad assault on the middle class . . . we have to stand in the breach,” Malloy said to applause.
There’s also likely a stark contrast between how the construction unions view the governor and how the teachers unions perceive him.
Malloy announced his priorities for what he planned to be the year of education reform late last year. And early on, he and the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, seemed at least in partial agreement.
In January, Malloy’s Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor and CEA Executive Director Mary Loftus Levine appeared at the same press conference where Pryor highlighted the areas where the administration and the union were in agreement on reform.
But whatever spirit of cooperation there was, it seemed to sour after the session’s opening day when many teachers took exception to the governor’s allegation that the only thing teachers had to do to earn tenure was to “show up for four years.”
Malloy has since tried to explain the comment but teachers haven’t been shy about expressing their displeasure. He was met by angry educators in New Haven in March, when they booed him as he was trying to explain the reform package.
CEA also has launched several ads attacking the governor’s proposal as “a bad experiment.”
With less than a week left in the legislative session, Malloy’s education package is still a work in progress. The administration has been negotiating the bill with legislative leaders behind closed doors since the Education Committee altered the bill so much that Malloy threatened to veto it.
While the governor may be unpopular with the teachers unions, the PLA bill wasn’t the only evidence of Malloy’s pro-labor agenda on display Thursday. The Senate was expected to take up a bill extending the right to collectively bargain to some day and home care workers.
Malloy set the bill in motion when he issued two executive orders that allowed both home care workers and daycare workers to vote and form unions. That effort has already made the governor the subject of three lawsuits claiming he overstepped his constitutional authority.
At the PLA rally, SEIU Director Paul Filson urged construction workers to lobby for the bill.
“SEIU, just like you, is working every day to grow the labor movement, to organize new workers,” he said. “We’re working to expand the labor movement by 12,000 new workers . . . By bringing in new union members to Connecticut we’re going to have a stronger voice.”
Tags: labor, PLAs, Dannel Malloy, teachers union, construction, Hugh McQuaid, dh
(8) Comments
posted by: jonpelto | May 3, 2012 6:34pm
Being nice to the Governor with the PLA legislation in the balance is understandable - but lets understand that truth.
Dan Malloy proposed the most anti-teacher and anti-union bill of any Democratic governor in the nation.
Even more to the point, Malloy has been pushing the most anti-labor bill that any Connecticut governor has proposed since our public employees’ won the right to collectively bargain nearly 40 years ago.
No Connecticut governor – Democrat, Republican or Independent – has ever proposed taking away the fundamental collective bargaining rights of a group of public employees, until this one.
He says “We do not have to agree on every political issue every time, but we can never be divided.”
We who support the fundamental right of Americans to join unions and collectively bargain haven’t gone anywhere - it is Dan Malloy who has left us and the Democratic Party. Working to take away an American’s right to join a union and lying about the role of arbitration is not disagreeing - it is driving a knife into the heart of what Democrats believe in.
posted by: Upset.Citizen | May 3, 2012 11:11pm
@jonpelto - You’re right about Dano driving a knife!However, as a union member I have to tell you I’m not feeling it in the heart, it’s more like the back!
posted by: perturbed | May 4, 2012 8:36pm
Huh. Malloy’s deadpan, sarcastic sense of humor just doesn’t come through in print. I guess you had to be there.
“Where there is a broad assault on the right of men and women to organize, a broad assault on the middle class . . . we have to stand in the breach,” Malloy said to applause.
Yeah, without seeing him fighting back his own amusement, perhaps during a long pregnant pause, followed by an eruption of laughter by the crowd, it’s just not the same.
You gotta admit, though, for Danny to come out with that line after helping to orchestrate—with the help of the Democratic legislature and some conflicted union bosses—the biggest threat to collective bargaining in the state’s history—just last summer!—took some guts. He beat state employees into submission with his bullying and threats of legislation to weaken collective bargaining, even raising the specter of Wisconsin, and now he’s claiming he’s the one protecting it?
Priceless. Colbert’s got nothing on Malloy!
—perturbed
PS: I know absolutely nobody—nobody!—of any political affiliation, that plans to vote for Malloy. Even those of us that voted for him last time have finally wised up.
posted by: Reasonable | May 5, 2012 2:10pm
perturbed: Don’t underestimate Gov. Dannel Malloy—as he has the benefit of the our big city social-benefits crowd, that voted him into office. These voters will again vote for Malloy, as he has not cut their welfare payments. Malloy is a protege of Pres. Barack Obama—who also has a lock on the national social benefits voters—making him, also, tough to beat at the polls.