A statewide fight last semester meant changes for students, faculty, and staff at Central Connecticut State University.
Every two years, the governor proposes a budget the legislature amends and votes on. Given the billions of surplus state dollars, many had the idea that public investment might be coming. The initial budget Governor Lamont proposed, however, involved cuts.
When a mass grassroots alliance pushed back, the fiscal debate became a political conflict spilling into the streets. Recovery For All is a statewide coalition that seeks to unite labor, faith, and community organizations around a set of “common good” demands, according to their website.
Those workers’ wages and benefits ultimately get decided by the state legislature, while many healthcare workers in the private sector are employed at state-funded nonprofits.
During the budget session, 1,700 long-term care workers walked out, hitting the picket line for nearly a month to demand good contracts and a “moral budget.” Unions and other grassroots organizations marched, rallied, and engaged in civil disobedience, trying to pressure legislators and Lamont toward a budget increase.
The resulting spending package of $50 billion had raises for long-term care workers, expanded crisis intervention services, and “$25 million more for special education [and] $16 million for school nutrition,” from Keith Phaneuf at the Hartford Courant. “Public higher education would get about $115 million less than they received in 2023-24,” Phaneuf added in 2024-2025,
“Next year, we will hit a fiscal cliff,” said John O’Connor, sociology professor and faculty union leader at Central. “We won a funding increase, but not enough to mitigate decades of austerity.” O’Connor noted how cuts become normalized, “leading to the huge rise in adjunct positions that don’t have benefits and pay considerably less than full-time professorships.”
O’Connor also mentioned how Terrence Chang, chancellor of Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, opposed the governor’s budget. “He stated publicly, ‘If you don’t raise funding, people will lose jobs and programs will get cut,’ which I think made the governor mad, but obviously it’s true. It’s already happening,” O’Connor said.
The numbers informing Chang’s budget came from the CSCU system office. Governor Lamont’s came from the Office of Policy Management but also spent over a million dollars in taxes on Boston Consulting Group recommendations. Faculty were up against CSCU and OPM, while the two-state agencies were at odds.
“Chang’s proposed budget didn’t do enough either,” Louise Williams, a history professor at Central, said. “Chang’s proposed budget didn’t do enough either.”
Williams is also president of the Connecticut chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a labor union representing professors.
“Nobody asked us what we needed before deciding what we would get,” said Williams contextualizing the budget in the history of market-driven politics shared by the governor. “We’re up against efforts to privatize not just universities but education. What we actually need is systemic change.”
Williams said she saw a missed opportunity to address the fact that fewer people are pursuing higher education.
“There are so many people who never had the chance to go to college because of longstanding racial disparities. We can do something to fix falling enrollment by addressing that part of systemic racism.” She noted that faculty and staff positions get cut when fewer students enroll, and the loss works in reverse, too.
The Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges is a union representing faculty and staff at public community colleges across the state. Data they tracked shows that as the number of faculty decreases, so does the number of racially marginalized students enrolled.
“Public higher ed, public services overall, disproportionately help the oppressed in society,” said O’Connor. “What are we then doing when we cut these things?”
Governor Lamont stood steadfast against lifting spending caps, a measure the legislature has voted six times before to approve. But this time, insiders say, progressive legislatures felt pressure from the governor and decided against a bold move.
“If spending caps are in the way, let’s blast ’em’ off,” Williams said. “What are we waiting for? Our goal is to counter the old-fashioned austerity narrative that makes it about financials at the expense of education, at the expense of students.”
Students were critical in last year’s funding fight, testifying before the appropriations committee, speaking at rallies, and joining striking workers on the picket line, O’Connor said.
“The students are the key,” said O’Connor. “The governor doesn’t listen if it’s just the faculty, but if the students and the faculty work together, then we’ll really see something. If we all unite, there’s no stopping us but we need a serious game plan.”
