Employees at Bloomfield Health Care Center took their voices to the street Monday and let management know they mean business when it comes to wages, benefits, and negotiations.

The 120-bed skilled nursing facility on Park Avenue in Bloomfield voted 68-42 in favor of union representation in 2006. It's been a month and a half since the National Labor Relations Board certified the results of that election. Workers said Monday that Bloomfield Health Care Center has ignored the union's effort to schedule negotiations.

Bloomfield Health Care Center's administrator Steve Barrett said he would email a statement by the end of the business day, but as of 9:39 p.m. no statement had arrived.

(Updated 9:36 p.m.) City Hall now plans to start turning away some men from homeless shelters, kill an early-reading program, eliminate 160 positions, and close a senior center, three police substations, and the Dwight School in order to balance the coming year's budget.

The Shubert theater, Market New Haven and Tweed New Haven Airport would also receive budget cuts under a revised budget plan Mayor John DeStefano announced at City Hall Thursday afternoon.

Click here to continue reading about the cuts New Haven will be making.

The state Senate approved an increase in the minimum wage from $7.65 an hour to $8 an hour starting in January 2009 and $8.25 an hour in January 2010.

The 25-11 vote, which gives final passage to the bill, was mainly along party lines with the exception of two Republicans, Sen. Sam Caligiuri, R-Waterbury and Sen. Anthony Guglielmo, R-Stafford Springs.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell is still uncertain about whether she would sign it. Rell's spokesman Adam Liegeot said in an emailed statement, "While the governor understands the needs of minimum wage workers, she does not want to take any action that will negatively impact businesses and jobs in Connecticut, especially during this troubled economy. Governor Rell will take her time and review this bill closely before deciding what action to take."

A few Republicans prepared to drag out the debate with a number of amendments Wednesday night, so proponents of the Paid Sick Days bill put the debate on hold until late Thursday night when they were able to find enough bipartisan support to pass the measure 20 to 16.

The bill allows employees to earn one hour of sick time for every forty hours worked and limits the number of paid sick days to 6.5 days per year. Employees could use those paid sick days to take care of themselves or a child in the event of illness. The new language limits the policy to employers with 50 or more employees.

The bill now goes to the House for a vote, but several legislators in that chamber are not optimistic it will come up for a vote. Last year the bill passed the Senate and died on the House calendar.

The Working Families Party, Acorn, and the National Partnership for Women and Families wants Connecticut legislators to know they are serious about getting a paid sick days bill passed.

Pulling out all the stops before the legislative session ends May 7th the group unveiled a report that finds approximately 44 percent of Connecticut employees have no paid sick days. The report also found that if workers were given an opportunity to earn up to 7 paid sick days they would only use about 2.9 days per year.

In addition to the report they are also putting out a robocall with some star power. The group got John Edwards to record the call urging voters to call their legislators and support the legislation.

An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they're for - and "I need them to say who they're for starting now."

John Olsen, one of Connecticut's 12 superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention in August, said Friday in a phone interview that he's working on getting Mr. Dean an answer.

Mr. Olsen, who is also president of the AFL-CIO, has not yet committed to vote for either Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama. In order to help him make a decision, Mr. Olsen is conducting a secret ballot of the AFL-CIO's executive board members this week.

As a superdelegate Mr. Olsen said he's received a lot of comments from a lot of different people and wanted to offer his executive board members a chance to weigh in on the discussion.

The Connecticut Working Families Party released a poll Wednesday that showed 87 percent of the 500 Connecticut voters polled this April favor the idea of earning paid sick days.

"It is rare to see so many voters in any state support any kind of legislation," Mark Bannon of Bannon Communications Research, the firm that conducted the poll said in a memo. The poll found 68.6 percent strongly favored the idea, 18.6 percent mildly favored it, while only 8 percent of the voters opposed it.

Working Families Party Executive Director Jon Green said this is the second year the bill has been introduced and he believes they have the votes to get it passed this year.

Last year the bill passed the Senate, but died on the House calendar.

A new report on income trends shows that income inequality grew more in Connecticut than any other state in the nation.

Real income for the poorest families in the state has declined since the late 1980s by 17 percent, while the wealthiest families have enjoyed an increase in their real income of 45 percent, according to a joint report from Connecticut Voices for Children and the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities in Washington D.C.

While the poor were getting poorer and the rich were getting richer, middle-income families saw little change in their real incomes. According to the report, the income of families in the middle grew just 5.1 percent.

Click here to view the chart, or keep reading about the report below.

An apple a day doesn't always keep the doctor away, but it's helping the Working Families Party and unions get their message across to lawmakers about the paid sick days bill.

Urania Petit, a Working Families Party member, said 40 percent of workers in the state do not receive a single paid sick day.

If a sick worker isn't given one day to recover their condition may get worse and that one day may turn into three months, Petit said Wednesday.

Driver Mohammed Liakot Ali hopes that'll make it easier for him to become his own boss.

Ali was among the cabbies who left their driver's seats Tuesday to park themselves at an announcement of a legislative probe of their industry.

The announcement, made by state Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, took place at Union Station, where some cabbies wait in line to pick up fares up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week -- in return for taking home $400 weekly, if they're lucky.

Click here to read the full story.