Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | FEBRUARY 10, 2025 7 Politics & Policy Rep. Manny Sanchez (D-New Britain) co-chairs the state legislature's Labor and Public Employees Committee, one of the most closely watched committees by businesses and industry groups. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Hard Labor Democratic co-chairs of legislature's Labor Committee defend favoring workers "I had a long work life in labor, orga- nizing workers, representing workers, negotiating on behalf of workers, lobbying on behalf of workers," Kushner said. When it was suggested that her union work is what shapes her philos- ophy as Labor co-chair, however, Kushner pushed back. "Don't assume you know everything about me," she said. "I think a lot of who I am as a person really comes from the way I was brought up." She says she learned from her family that it's important to ensure "we treat people fairly and with dignity and respect." Her extended family — including not just her parents but "grandparents on both sides, and aunts and uncles" — all worked in grocery stores, she said. Her father, Sheldon Kushner, first owned a store in Iowa called KT Market. Later, he owned King Dollar in Lincoln, Iowa, where she worked as a teenager. One of her grandfathers owned a store in Council Bluffs, Iowa, called the White Front Market. "I was born in the 1950s in a tiny little town in Iowa, where we were the only Jewish family and had my father's grocery store," Kushner said. "You learn from your folks and from your experience. I learned everything from being different and what that meant to be considered 'other' in a small community, … and I learned a lot about business watching my father work, and my grandparents." She learned from her father how a business should be run, including that it's important to treat customers and employees well. "During the debate about paid family medical leave, I thought a lot about my dad," Kushner said. "There were a lot of claims during that debate in 2019 that somehow this would be difficult for small businesses. And I had the opposite reaction, because I knew my father had never fired someone who got sick with cancer, or who was going to have a baby, but he couldn't afford to pay them when they were out on leave." She believes Connecticut's paid leave law "was a great equalizer," allowing small businesses to compete with big corporations that provided benefits small companies couldn't. "I think I was right," she said. "I think it's been proven that this has been something really good for small businesses." Open-minded legislator Sanchez, 36, keeps a pair of white Crocs on the windowsill of his office in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. "He used to wear those to his office," Sanchez says of the late Quentin "Q" Williams, a popular state representative from Middle- town who died after a collision with a wrong-way driver on Route 9, following the first day of the 2023 By David Krechevsky davidk@hartfordbusiness.com O ne is a midwesterner from a family of grocery store owners. The other is a city native raised by a single mom. While those descriptions over-simplify who they are, they nonetheless highlight the contrast between the co-chairs of the General Assembly's Labor and Public Employees Committee. Together, Sen. Julie Kushner (D-Danbury) and Rep. Manny Sanchez (D-New Britain) lead a committee that is one of the most closely watched by businesses and industry groups in Connecticut, and with good reason. Over the past six years, it has helped push through bills supported by labor groups and opposed by the business community that ultimately became law. They include: • Paid family and medical leave; • Linking the state's minimum wage to the federal employment cost index, which as of Jan. 1 has raised the rate to $16.35 per hour; • The "captive audience" law, which prohibits employers from mandating meetings to share views on religious or political issues, including unionization; and • Expansion of the state's paid sick leave law. Kushner was first elected to the Senate in 2018, and has chaired the Labor Committee since 2019. Sanchez was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2020, and joined the committee as vice chair in 2021, before becoming co-chair in 2023. Both say they are proud of the labor-supporting bills they helped shepherd into law, seeing it as the committee's mission. Others, including the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA), disagree with that view of the committee's purpose. With more pro-labor legislation on the agenda in the 2025 session — including protecting warehouse employees and allowing striking workers to receive unemployment benefits — the Labor Committee, and its co-chairs, remain a focal point. Union organizer Kushner, 72, was born in Hamburg, Iowa, but grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Wisconsin. After working as a secretary in college and discovering that women were not treated equally in the workplace, she embarked on what became a 40-year career in organized labor with the United Auto Workers. CT'S RISING MINIMUM WAGE In 2019, the state legislature, led by the Labor and Public Employees Committee, passed a law that gradually raised the minimum wage and then connected it to the percentage change in the federal employment cost index. Here's how the minimum wage has increased since then. Continued on next page MIN. WAGE Source: CT Dept. of Labor $20 $15 $10 10/1/2019 9/1/2020 8/1/2021 7/1/2022 6/1/2023 1/1/2024 1/1/2025 $ 11 $ 12 $ 13 $ 15 $ 15 .69 $ 16 .35 $ 14

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