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January 15, 2025

Labor Committee resurrects bill to regulate warehouse quotas

CT Mirror Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, co-chair of the Labor and Public Employees Committee.

The General Assembly’s Labor and Public Employees Committee has again raised a bill seeking to regulate the use of production quotas for warehouse workers.

The bill, Senate Bill 8, is the first raised by the committee, which has already met twice and voted Tuesday to officially draft the bill. 

The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Julie Kushner (D-Danbury) and Rep. Manny Sanchez (D-New Britain), has 36 proposed bills on its list, including 22 from senators and 14 from representatives. 

The warehouse quota bill has been raised during the past two legislative sessions, targeting e-commerce giant Amazon, but failed to be approved in either one.

The current version contains just “placeholder” text that seeks to “limit the extent to which certain warehouse distribution centers can require their employees to meet unreasonable production quotas,” while also adding that it seeks to allow “individuals participating in a labor dispute to be eligible for unemployment benefits” and to “protect workers’ rights.”

A separate effort to make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits also failed to pass during the short 2024 session.

In addition, Sen. Rob Sampson (R-Wolcott) has submitted a bill this year specifically seeking to prohibit paying unemployment compensation benefits to striking workers.

Last year’s version of the Amazon bill sought to create protections for warehouse workers against unreasonable quotas imposed by employers. It would have restricted the use of quotas based solely on ranking the performance of one employee in relation to the performance of other employees.

It also would have required employers to provide a written description to new hires of each quota the employee is or will be subject to, and any potential adverse employment action that might result from failing to meet each quota.

California, Minnesota, New York and Washington are the only other states to this point that have enacted laws regulating quotas in warehouses. 

Among the three dozen bills raised in the Labor Committee, topics include bills seeking to study artificial intelligence, various bills addressing apprenticeship programs and the prevailing wage, and others seeking to modify the state’s paid family and medical leave program.

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