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January 22, 2021

Lamont seeks to ramp up retraining for workers in pandemic-hit sectors

HBJ Photo | Bill Morgan Wallingford resident Thomas Nichols underwent skills retraining that enabled him to swap his job as an apartment maintenance worker to working for German manufacturer BYK Corp.

Federal education funds are the state’s best bet to ramp up worker training and workforce development as the pandemic continues to gut certain industries, Gov. Ned Lamont said Friday.

Lamont spoke at the CBIA Virtual Economic Summit + Outlook Conference on a range of issues affecting the state’s businesses but kept circling back to employment and workforce development. 

“This is the year to do it,” Lamont said of workforce efforts, citing the $200 million to $250 million in federal CARES Act funding directed to the state and designated for post-secondary education. Shorter-term certificate programs that can retrain workers in ailing sectors like hospitality are a priority, Lamont said. 

“I really want to get people back to work,” Lamont said, citing a recent program that retrained 300 baristas and other restaurant workers for jobs in nursing. He also vowed to help businesses fill many jobs that have gone unfilled due to a shortage of qualified candidates. “I’ve got to make darn sure that no one leaves the state because they can't find workers,” he said.
 
Other issues Lamont addressed at Friday’s meeting include:

COVID-19 Workers Comp 

Expanding workers comp to cover COVID-19 places an excessive burden on businesses seeking to reopen in the state, Lamont said. The state’s businesses have done a good job protecting the safety of workers so far during the pandemic, he added, and said if he makes any changes to the system, they will be narrow in scope.

The State Assembly’s Labor and Public Employees Committee voted Thursday to draft legislation to expand workers’ comp coverage to address pandemic’s impact on workers. 

Unemployment trust fund

Loans to the states to pay for surging unemployment gains should be turned into grants, Lamont said, adding that he is pressuring newly appointed House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) to act on the issue. 

Employers will be on the hook for hundreds of millions in Connecticut alone if federal loans are to be repaid now that the state's unemployment insurance trust fund has gone broke. 

Tax hikes

Lamont renewed his pledge to avoid any major tax increases, saying the state can fund social services and support nonprofits without broad-based hikes.

Vaccine campaign

Connecticut could be vaccinating five times as many people as it currently is if it could obtain more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, Lamont said. 

Although the federal government gave the state 50,000 extra doses last week, the limited supply continues to constrain vaccination efforts even as the threat of new varieties of COVID-19 looms. 

“We have a race against this highly infectious strain,” Lamont said of the U.K. strain. “The stumbling block right now is getting additional vaccines.”

Gas taxes

The threats of climate change and pollution makes new fees on fuels that create pollutants a necessary evil, Lamont said, referring to recent gas taxes proposed in Massachusetts.

But Connecticut won’t put itself at a competitive disadvantage by acting alone in the region, Lamont said. A climate-related gas tax could generate $80 million to 90 million in revenue and help move people toward electric vehicles, he said. “It’s not going to be very popular,” he added. 

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