Union Bosses Trade Blows Over Philly Soda Tax

GUY BENTLEY

5/29/2016

The president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees is urging Philadelphians to support a tax that would hit the poor much harder than the rich.

Henry Nicholas, president of District 1199C, expressed his dismay at Philadelphia Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell’s decision to oppose the mayor’s 3-cents-per-ounce tax on soda in the pages of the Philadelphia Tribune.

“A tax on sugary drinks is the fairest solution to the inequity that has plagued our communities for decades. That’s why I’m standing with 14 unions, representing over 100,000 members in support of Mayor Kenney’s plan,” Nicholas wrote. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney proposed the tax to fund pre-kindergarten education.

The policy has been lambasted by democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders as an attack on the poor. According to a research note from the UK’s Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Sanders is correct to say a soda tax will place the biggest burden on the poor.

This is because the poor spends a greater share of income on the bare necessities, and any taxes targeting these goods will have a disproportionate impact.

“We can easily avoid it by buying one of the dozen other tax-exempt products at the local corner,” Nicholas writes.

But if people were to change their behavior in response to higher taxes, consumers could just switch to cheaper brands or buy their groceries from lower quality stores. “This leads to the consumption of inferior goods rather than the consumption of fewer calories,” writes the IEA’s head of lifestyle economics Christopher Snowdon.

The IEA’s previous work on these “sin taxes” shows the poorest 20 percent of UK households spend roughly $2,000 per year on sin taxes, amounting to around 11.4 percent of their disposable income

Sugar taxes may not even have an impact on people’s health, besides the economic harm it could do to the poor. “No impact on obesity or health outcomes has ever been found,” Snowdon writes. “Early evidence from Mexico suggests that a ten percent tax on sugary drinks led to an average daily decline in consumption of 36ml per person.”

“As Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition and dietetics, notes, this is the equivalent of 16 calories and is ‘a drop in the caloric ocean. Long-term reductions in total energy in the range of 300-500 kcal/d are probably needed to prevent obesity.'’’

Snowdon cites a systematic review of 880 studies that found “the public health case for using economic instruments to promote dietary and physical activity behavior change may be less compelling than some proponents have claimed.”

Verizon, unions reach four-year labor contract

Mike Snider, USA TODAY

May 27, 2016

Verizon and striking unions have reached a four-year contract and employees will likely return to work next week, labor and union officials say.

Nearly 40,000 Verizon employees who are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Communications Workers of America went on strike more than six weeks ago.

“Today, I am pleased to announce that the parties have reached an agreement in principle on a four-year contract, resolving the open issues in the ongoing labor dispute between Verizon’s workers, unions, and management," Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said. He urged Verizon management and union officials to begin meeting in Washington, D.C., nearly two weeks ago. "The parties are now working to reduce the agreement to writing, after which the proposal will be submitted to CWA and IBEW union members for ratification."

Perez said that during the two weeks of negotiations in Washington at the Labor Department, "I have observed firsthand the parties’ good faith commitment to narrowing differences and forging an agreement that helps workers and the company. The parties have a shared interest in the success of Verizon and its dedicated workforce. Indeed, these two interests are inextricably intertwined."

The most recent labor contract expired Aug. 1, 2015. The unions went on strike, criticizing Verizon for outsourcing jobs and requiring some workers to relocate. Verizon officials maintained that compromises on benefits are needed to tame costs.

"This tentative resolution is a testament to the power of collective bargaining," Perez said. "I commend the leadership of Verizon, CWA, and IBEW for their commitment to resolving these difficult issues in the spirit of constructive engagement. ... I expect that workers will be back on the job next week.”

CWA President Chris Shelton said that the unions will take down their pickets and that Verizon has agreed to add "new, middle-class jobs" on the East Coast. The deal, Shelton said, "is a huge win not just for striking workers, but for our communities and our country as a whole. The agreement in principle at Verizon is a victory for working families across the country and an affirmation of the power of working people.”

The CWA also said that the new contract will, for the first time, include some Verizon Wireless retail workers –  about 85 who are in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Everett, Mass.  Verizon Chief Administration Officer Marc Reed said that the “agreement in principle” includes contracts for about 165 Verizon Wireless employees.

"The agreement is consistent with our objective of creating high quality American jobs and achieving meaningful changes and enhancements to the contracts that will better enable our wireline business unit to compete and succeed in the digital world," Reed said in a statement. "In the meantime, we look forward to having all of our employees soon back at work in their regular positions and doing what they do best – serving our customers.”

Union officials complimented Perez and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Allison Beck and other officials who assisted in the negotiations for, as IBEW President Lonnie Stephenson said, "all their efforts to help us reach a fair and mutually beneficial agreement that gets our members back on the job."

“This tentative contract is an important step forward in helping to end this six-week strike and keeping good Verizon jobs in America," Stephenson said in a statement. "“We will be sharing the details of it with our members for approval in the immediate days ahead. ... They look forward to returning to work serving their customers, working under a strong pro-worker and pro-jobs contract.”

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Question to CWA President Chris Shelton

What about the rest of wireless retail workers who work for Verizon?

How to bring back labor without relying on unions

By Paula Dwyer , Bloomberg View

05/25/16

National anxiety over the decline in middle-class living standards is driving this year’s presidential contest like no other issue.

Donald Trump promises a return of manufacturing jobs as the solution, but he misleads voters into thinking those jobs are coming back, when they aren’t; his trade-deal bombast will only make things worse. Polls show his message resonates well with blue-collar voters who believe unions had a lot to do with creating the America he promises to make great again.

Both Democratic candidates, meanwhile, say they would take steps to bolster unions without acknowledging their negative effects and weaknesses. “I believe when unions are strong, America is strong,” Hillary Clinton told the Service Employees International Union convention on Monday, adding that “unions helped build the strongest middle class right here” in the U.S.

All three contenders, in different ways, are swimming against the tide: The number of union members, about 11 percent of the workforce last year, is half what it was in 1983. And with the decline of manufacturing, labor’s traditional stronghold, most union workers today are in low-wage sectors, like the hospitality industry. While these unions have improved working conditions and wages and exercise political clout, they hardly offer their members the middle-class lifestyles of yore.

When President Barack Obama last week required companies to give overtime pay to about 4.2 million more workers, it was a reminder that government now orders by regulation what unions used to get in bargaining with employers.

Though free-marketeers say rules like this result in layoffs and hurt the very workers they’re meant to help, the new overtime pay standard is just a long-overdue update of a 1975 rule. And government actions like this will increasingly be needed to replace organized labor’s role as a countervailing force.

Harvard’s Bruce Western and University of Washington’s Jake Rosenfeld found that the decline of organized labor from 1973 to 2007 explains one-third of the growth in inequality among men. They argue that the decline of unions is as much of a drag on wages as is the lack of a college degree.

Other studies show a strong link between unions and inter-generational mobility. Harvard’s Richard Freeman, for example, recently found that the offspring of union parents had higher incomes than those in non-union households. Unions also lifted the wages of non-union workplaces as employers sought to keep organized labor at bay.

Problem is, some unions have also pursued their interests to the detriment of others, such as negotiating for public-sector pensions that future taxpayers can’t afford, or for benefits that raised the cost of cars so much that automakers couldn’t compete.

Unions have also tended to overemphasize seniority, shielding legacy benefits at the expense of opportunities for younger workers, and to protect underperformers, sapping productivity. And teachers’ unions sometimes blocked much-needed education reforms.

Of the candidates, Clinton seems the least fulsome in promising a return to the lost workers’ paradise (which may be the reason many rank-and-file union members don’t support her). But with her standing among white men already at rock bottom, Clinton would be loath to say that the U.S. doesn’t need stronger unions so much as a more modern version of unionism that benefits everyone, not just those willing to pay union dues, to lift the economy.

As former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and others have explained, middle-income wage earners drive economic growth because they have a greater propensity to spend than upper-income households do. But with unions sidelined and wages flat-lined, the middle class isn’t building the demand for goods and services that persuades employers to open new stores, expand product lines, invest in new technology and hire more people. Put another way, stagnant wages are the root of the U.S.’s slow growth.

One proposal Clinton has to address this would be to provide a tax credit to companies that offer profit-sharing. The idea is to reward companies that compensate many more workers, not just a small circle of senior executives, on the basis of group rather than individual performance.

Clinton also seeks to make work more attractive, especially for women who have left the labor market, with paid family leave, federal funding of pre-school programs and more flexible work schedules. Cornell University economists found that, if the U.S. had had family-friendly policies similar to those in Europe, women’s labor-force participation would have been 7 percentage points higher.

More could be done, such as offering tax credits that help pay for child care, or that help employees upgrade their knowledge and skills. A report by Summers and Britain’s Ed Balls, one of the Labour Party’s leading economic thinkers, has more good ideas along these lines. They propose, for example, that companies form German-style works councils, which give employees certain rights to information and consultation over work conditions, schedules and wages. Studies show that these councils can increase productivity, leaving both labor and management better off.

Another good idea: Require companies that receive government contracts to offer paid apprenticeships that help young workers who aren’t college-bound learn the numeracy and literacy skills most jobs require today.

In a sign that wages may finally be picking up, the U.S. Labor Department reported on May 6 that hourly wages were 2.5 percent higher in April than a year earlier. That’s good news, but not nearly enough to reverse the decade-long slippage. More activist government policies are needed, too.

Unions to Gov. Charlie Baker: Cap sick leave on top earners, not rank and file

By Shira Schoenberg | sschoenberg@repub.com 

May 25, 2016

BOSTON — Unions on Wednesday began to push back against Gov. Charlie Baker's proposal to cap public employee sick time, a bill that faces major hurdles to pass before the end of this year's legislative session.

"We believe the Baker administration should begin by focusing on the top earners in the administration before looking at the rank-and-file state employees," said Jim Durkin, director of legislation, political action and communications for AFSCME Council 93.

Baker, a Republican, introduced a bill Wednesday to cap the amount of sick time that executive branch state government employees can accrue to 1,000 hours, which is equal to six months' pay. Employees who have already accrued more than 1,000 hours would be able to keep that time.

The bill would save the state approximately $3.5 million annually, based on data from the last three fiscal years, by limiting payouts when employees retire.

Under current law, public employees can accrue up to 15 sick days a year. When they retire, they can cash out 20 percent of the unused time.

Recent media reports have highlighted huge payouts taken by public employees, particularly in public higher education. Baker's bill would not apply to higher education.

Durkin said AFSCME, which represents employees of state, county and municipal governments, opposes any effort to change members' benefits outside the collective bargaining process.

"Unfortunately, legislation like this is a common reaction by elected officials after a story breaks about top earners like our public higher education executives who are able to retire with these golden parachutes," Durkin said. "For the rank-and-file state employees that AFSCME represents, the 20 percent buyback amounts to a modest one-time benefit on top of a modest pension."

Durkin said the estimated cost savings from limiting the benefit does not take into account the state's savings on overtime when workers minimize the use of sick time.

For employees with existing state contracts, if the law passes, the administration would need to bargain the impact of the change into the terms and conditions of a contract.

David Holway, national president of NAGE, which represents 22,000 workers in 60 state agencies, could not say yet whether NAGE might support the change because it would have to be implemented through bargaining. Holway noted that part of the reason for allowing sick time to accumulate is because state workers do not get any short or long-term disability pay, so sick time is used in place of disability.

"If the governor brings the sense of fairness that he's shown thus far to state employees, I think we can work things out," Holway said.

Holway added that most employees get nowhere near the type of buybacks that make the news. "A few people get these payouts, it makes all state employees look bad, and we're tired of that," Holway said.

Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said the MTA believes decisions about sick time should be made through collective bargaining, not legislation. "Governor Baker's proposed legislation is a reaction to a few highly paid administrators abusing the system," Madeloni said. "Instead of addressing that, the legislation would affect hard-working public employees who provide essential services to residents of the Commonwealth."

State Rep. Aaron Vega, D-Holyoke, a member of the Joint Committee on Public Service, which looks at bills related to public employees, said he thinks lawmakers may be interested in taking a larger look at issues related to public employee pensions and benefits. "There's definitely parts of it that make sense," Vega said.

But Vega predicted that the bill is unlikely to move forward before the July 31 end of the legislative session.

"I'm not sure what the will of the House or the Senate will be to look at that, especially given that we only have two months left in the formal session," Vega said. "I can't imagine it getting passed.... I can see it being something he files next session as part of a bigger package."

Vega added, "I've not heard from leadership or anyone else that this is a priority."

A spokesman for House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, said the speaker has not yet seen the legislation, and it will be referred to a committee and reviewed.

Baker acknowledged that it is late in the legislative session to pass a major bill, but he told reporters that he hopes to "engage the debate."

"We're proposing the issue based on a growing body of evidence that the amount of accumulated sick leave that people were cashing out when they left state service was extraordinary, and certainly way beyond what anybody who actually works in the private sector, and pays the taxes that pays for that, would be eligible for in the private sector," Baker said.

Baker said the 1,000-hour limit would allow sick leave to function in a way that is comparable to the type of short-term disability policy available at many private companies.

Currently, Baker said, "It's pretty hard to argue that there's anybody in the private sector who has anything that looks like what the state's current policy is."

Why union workers should vote Republican

By Peter Morici 

May 24, 2016

Trump will deliver a tougher pro-worker policy than Clinton

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Unionized workers should get behind Donald Trump. Leaders of organized labor will see things differently, and that’s a tragedy for their members.

As organizers frequently preach, workers join unions to make a better life for themselves and their families. At the most basic level, that comes down to using collective bargaining to win higher wages, better benefits and more reasonable working conditions.

Too often, however, unions use workers’ dues to support a liberal social agenda that many rank-and-file members may oppose or at most feel neutral about — for example, union support for the Democratic Party agenda on abortion and gay-transgender rights, and appointment of radically liberal Supreme Court justices who circumvent the Constitution to directly legislate what liberals can’t win in Congress and state legislatures.

More directly harmful to unionized workers is support of the Democratic Party agenda on wages and workplace conditions — subjects handled directly for union members through their hard-won contracts.

For example, increasing the minimum wage in New York City won’t raise pay for unionized city transit workers or policemen but it will raise their cost $10 to $15 a week for buying morning coffee and lunch at takeout restaurants.

To union bosses that’s social progress, but to union workers it’s a pay cut.

The same goes for President Obama’s new rules requiring overtime pay for salaried employees earning up to $47,476 a year. Higher pay for managers at restaurants, supermarkets, department stores and the like will translate into higher prices for meals away from home, groceries, clothing and many other essentials of everyday life.

In fact, by shuttering some of those and other businesses, federal intervention will slow economic growth, drive up unemployment and generally result in fewer private-sector union jobs — for example, in the retail and wholesale distribution, food processing, trucking and other industries.

During the Obama presidency, union participation in the private sector has fallen to below 7 percent. The president’s severe regulations regarding domestic energy production at large, unionized oil companies, his agenda on carbon-dioxide emissions and other environmental issues, and restrictions on banks that curtail lending to smaller enterprises have contributed mightily to the continued decline of American manufacturing, where some of the best-paying union jobs remain.

In exchange for supporting Democrats’ social agenda, unions have gotten little that really matters.

During the 2008 campaign, Candidate Obama promised to back “card check.” That would permit unions to organize workplaces by obtaining the signatures of a majority of workers on pledge cards instead of holding conventional elections. After he was elected, Mr. Obama walked away from this promise.

However, what is really salting the land for private-sector unions and destroying so many good-paying jobs is Mr. Obama’s failure to take effective action against Chinese, Japanese and other Asian governments’ currency manipulation.

The 4 million jobs lost to the trade deficit are largely manufacturing jobs, a sector where unions are strongest.

Donald Trump has promised repeatedly to get tough with China and other currency manipulators. Hillary Clinton has done the same but she has flipped on this issue.

As secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would further open U.S. markets to imports from Asia but without adequate provision to effectively combat currency manipulation. Now that she is running for president, she’s against it.

Moreover, her trade adviser, Princeton professor Alan Blinder, has chastised Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders for their tough positions on trade without targeting similar promises made by Mrs. Clinton.

Quite simply, Mrs. Clinton will use “the advice of policy advisers” to climb down from her newly embraced tough stance on trade once elected. Much as did Bill Clinton, who opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement while running for the presidency, but then pushed it through Congress over the objection of Democratic Party leaders.

Trade is the biggest issue affecting unionized workers in America, and they can count on Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton, to deliver a tougher pro-worker policy.

Unions Split as Bitter U.S. Campaign Exposes Divergent Agendas

By Tim Jones & Mark Niquette

May 24, 2016

Before the holidays last year, three unions representing 6.6 million active or retired service workers and public employees endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. The AFL-CIO and its trade workers, representing 12.5 million people, are in no such hurry.

The split amid an unexpectedly contentious Democratic primary season has exposed contrasting agendas in organized labor. Trade unionists are exercised by international deals, which they blame for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Service workers less affected by globalization advocate collective-bargaining rights and wage protection.

Even as leaders vow that organized labor will be united behind the Democratic candidate, the appeal of the presumptive Republican nominee, real-estate developer and television personality Donald Trump, could peel away rank-and-file votes in the fall.

"A lot of people are just fed up with establishment politics," said Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Union Local 1999, which represents 1,400 Indianapolis workers about to lose their jobs because Carrier Corp. is moving operations to Mexico. Jones’s local endorsed Democrat Bernie Sanders, whose anti-free trade stance has won the support of many rank and file workers.

The election is more than five months away and Democrats say there’s plenty of time to heal wounds and unite. They say unions such as the AFL-CIO often sit on the sidelines until the Democratic nominee is selected. (The giant labor federation has endorsed only twice before the party’s nominee was clear, in 1984 and 2000.)

Trump is a wild card. The Republican, like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, could make inroads among traditional Democratic voters unhappy with the uneven and sluggish pace of the economic recovery. He has made Carrier’s decision a frequent object of derision and has often talked about winning states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which haven’t delivered their electoral votes to a Republican since the 1980s.

"This is a time when a Donald Trump can emerge," said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois.

The disarray for organized labor follows a long decline. Membership peaked in the mid-1950s, at about one-third of the U.S. work force. In 2015, the percentage was 11.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While the movement was born in steel mills, auto assembly lines and coal mines, much of the modern rank-and-file is found in classrooms, state and local office buildings and prisons. Public sector and service-union membership outnumbers that of trade unions by 5-to-1. And the gap is getting wider.

"Manufacturing workers are very sensitive to trade issues, while service workers and teachers are focused on austerity budgets and government spending," Bruno said. "It’s playing out in a more dramatic way because there’s never been a Republican candidate who was so anti-trade. This certainly raises the profile of the disagreements."

Although Clinton entered the race last year as the strong favorite, Sanders’s populist campaign tapped anger over Wall Street, income inequality and blue-collar job losses. The Vermont senator’s path to the nomination is almost impossible, yet an average of recent polls have him defeating Trump by 11 points, while Clinton is effectively tied with Trump, according to RealClearPolitics.

Nafta’s Hangover

The dynamic is complicated by Clinton’s record in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which her then-president husband championed more than two decades ago. Sanders calls trade pacts "disastrous" while Trump pledges to renegotiate or scuttle Nafta. Some workers have taken note.

Geno DiFabio, 53, a truck driver and a former member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, said he was a Democrat since he started voting at 18. Then, he took a Republican ballot in Ohio’s March 15 primary to vote for Trump.

DiFabio, who is from the hollowed-out steel center of Youngstown, said he has been increasingly turned off by the positions that Clinton and other Democrats have taken on immigration, gun rights and abortion.

"There’s enough to dislike about her to say, ‘Well, let’s give Trump a try,”’ DiFabio said.

The labor vote isn’t monolithic. President Obama won 58 percent of union households in 2012, while Republican Mitt Romney took 40 percent, according to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

In Pennsylvania, about 28 percent of the 800,000 AFL-CIO members are Republicans, and while those members may back Trump, it’s unlikely he will woo many others, said Rick Bloomingdale, the organization’s president in that state.

“He wasn’t against bad trade deals until he started running for president,” Bloomingdale said. “The voters are not stupid.”

Even if Trump appeals to some white union men, that will be offset or even overcome by the number of union women, blacks and Latinos against him, said Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic consultant in Washington who was political director at the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2002.

“I’m in the school that when the votes are counted, he’s just going to be another Republican presidential candidate,” Rosenthal said.

In any event, the influence of union endorsements is limited, said Chuck Deppert, former president of the Indiana State AFL-CIO.

"The leadership is a lot closer to the Democratic Party than the average union worker is," said Deppert, who led the organization from 1989 to 1997. "They elected Obama and expected great things, but the average guy in the factory doesn’t see much difference. The jobs are still slipping away."

Pinckneyville City Council extends contracts for one year with unions

Stephanie Esters The Southern

5/24/2016

PINCKNEYVILLE — Officials with the city of Pinckneyville extended contracts with its labor unions by one year, with no pay raise, and voted to continue paying into the unions' pension plans.

Council members approved these resolutions for the contracts Monday night at the Pinckneyville City Council meeting.

The one-year extension was with the Laborers' International Union of North America, the Southern and Central Illinois Laborers' District Council and Laborers' Local 773.

The council had also expected Mayor Roy Spencer to talk about a nuisance ordinance that would address condemned houses, tall grass, trash and other items. City Clerk Larry S. West said the ordinance was not finalized and would be presented again at a later date.

West said Spencer, who was not present, was hospitalized, but is doing well.

Council members also approved a resolution allowing the city to issue tax anticipation warrants, which would allow the city to borrow money, if it needed to.

At its last meeting, city council members voted to OK the city borrowing the money, if it needed to, to help with the shortfall created by unpaid bills from the Pinckneyville Correctional center.

West noted that the city had not yet borrowed any money.

Unions boycotting Democratic fundraising dinner over layoffs

By Neil Vigdor

May 23, 2016

The names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson — scrubbed because of their ties to slavery — won’t be the only glaring void when Connecticut Democrats hold their annual fundraising dinner next week.

At least five of the largest state employee unions are boycotting the June 2 banquet in Hartford, in protest of ongoing layoffs under Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy that have reached 1,000. That number is expected to grow to 2,000.

A strategic source of financial and grassroots support for the state’s majority party, the unions traditionally buy several tables at $1,850 each for what has been rebranded as the Connecticut Democratic Progress Dinner.

But not this year, coming off the standoff between Malloy and his labor base over salary reductions to close a $1 billion budget deficit. Union leaders had called for Malloy to raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents instead. Now, they’re planning to demonstrate outside the dinner.

“The decision was prompted by the governor’s Jekyll and Hyde behavior,” said Larry Dorman, a spokesman for Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “He was able to force through a budget that’s going to be devastating to the people of Connecticut and the values that we stand for, and it just made no sense to be a part of that (event) this year.”

Rift between party, labor

Malloy’s administration stood by the austerity measures and the $19.7 billion budget, which passed along mostly party lines in the Legislature earlier this month. It referred questions on the boycott to the Connecticut Democrats, who tried to downplay the tiff.

“The Connecticut Democratic Party continues to share many of the same values and goals as our friends in the labor movement,” said Leigh Appleby, a state party spokesman. “And we remain committed to working with our state’s labor unions to grow our economy from the middle out. It is unfortunate that some would attempt to undermine an event with the sole purpose of raising the resources to elect Democrats up and down the ticket, including Sen. (Richard) Blumenthal, but we expect the Progress Dinner to be a success with help from Democrats across the state, including friends in organized labor.”

The event, which is marking its 68th year and typically draws 1,000 people, was previously named the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner. This year’s keynote speaker is former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

In a move that garnered national attention — and some criticism for political correctness — Democrats voted last year to change the name. They cited Jefferson and Jackson’s ownership of slaves as a key factor in the decision, as well as Jackson’s role in the removal of Native Americans from the southeastern U.S. in what was known as the Trail of Tears.

The event’s third namesake, John Bailey, who led the state party and then the Democratic National Committee under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, was preserved in a new award for service to the party.

“We are not purchasing any tickets this year,” said Lori Pelletier, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO. “We are going to be saving our money and investing it in our own political program.”

Making their point

Pelletier said the union, which represents 30,000 state employees, including 700 of those laid off, has instructed its members to withhold political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. Each year, she said, those add up to $75,000 to $100,000. But the AFL-CIO only buys a table at the Democratic fundraising dinner, where Pelletier said union members will be passing out literature and asking attendees to contribute to a special fund for the employees affected by the layoffs.

“We are going to be out there raising awareness about our displeasure with the budget that governor signed,” Pelletier said. “We’re not going to be stopping people from going in ... just an educational thing.”

The 30,000-member American Federation of Teachers of Connecticut is planning to pull a no-show.

“Our members have made clear that they don’t want their limited political contributions being used to further devastate Connecticut’s quality of life,” said Jan Hochadel, the group’s president. “What they do want is for their pooled resources to support women and men who will fight for the services they provide the people of our state every day.”

Two arms of the Service Employees International Union — SEIU 1199 and CSEA SEIU Local 2001— are also joining the boycott.

“Affiliation with the Democratic Party simply does not guarantee that a politician supports working people,” said Ben Phillips, a spokesman for CSEA SEIU Local 2001.

This is not the first time unions have struck back at Malloy. Before last month’s Democratic presidential primary in Connecticut, several labor groups refused to knock on doors for Hillary Clinton despite their endorsement of the former secretary of state. They balked because of Malloy’s alliance with Clinton, who still won the primary over Bernie Sanders.

“The relationship with the Malloy administration has been damaged,” Phillips said.