The Connecticut General Assembly is back in session and, as has become an annual tradition on this blog, the Labor & Public Employees Committee is busy scheduling hearings on a wide array of bills that could significantly impact employers across the state. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know the drill — some of these proposals are familiar faces that have been kicking around for years, while others represent genuinely new territory. Either way, employers should be paying close attention.
The CBIA has been tracking these bills closely and you’re encouraged to use their resources if you’re an employer in the state. Several bills are highlighted as likely to be heard at a public hearing the week of March 9, 2026.
So what’s on the table? Let me walk through the highlights, starting with the bills most likely to get a hearing next week.
Bills Likely Up for a Public Hearing the Week of March 9
HB 5003: Workforce Development and Working Conditions. This is a larger one — a sprawling omnibus bill that touches multiple industries and employment practices. Among other things, it would require health care employers to indemnify employees for workplace assaults and provide full wage continuation without charging leave. It would expand the successor contractor law to a wide range of industries — including warehouses, hospitals, schools, and commercial buildings — requiring new contractors to retain prior employees for 90 days with steep daily penalties for violations. It also strengthens cannabis labor peace agreement requirements by mandating binding arbitration and eliminates the employee-size threshold in the ban on employment promissory notes, applying the restriction to all employers regardless of size. If you recall, I summarized the promissory notes law back in 2019, and that law previously only applied to employers with at least 26 employees. This bill would change that.
The CBIA supports Sections 30–33 of the bill, which invest in career and technical education and workforce pipeline development, but opposes the vast majority of the rest.
SB 345: Breastfeeding, Pre- and Post-Shift Hours, and Workplace Heat Safety. Don’t let the title fool you — this bill is actually three distinct policy areas rolled into one.
Section 1 brings state breastfeeding accommodation requirements more in line with federal law, which is relatively straightforward.
But Section 2 is the one employers need to watch. It amends the definition of “hours worked” to explicitly include time spent in employer-required security screenings, time an employee is required to wait on premises while no work is provided, and time spent on required on-call duty at a designated location. If that sounds familiar, it should — a version of the security screening provision passed the Senate in 2024 as part of Senate Bill 408. This version appears broader and perhaps in line with the recent Connecticut Supreme Court case. Section 3 creates a working group to study heat-related illness in the workplace.
SB 355: Limitations on Nondisclosure Agreements. Another bill that has been percolating for several years. This one would significantly expand restrictions on nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements in the workplace, making void and unenforceable any agreement that prevents employees, independent contractors, or volunteers from disclosing or discussing conduct they reasonably believe involves discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour violations, or sexual assault. It also creates a new private right of action with statutory damages of $10,000 plus attorney fees. If you recall, back in 2019 the legislature was considering a similar proposal (then Proposed Senate Bill 697) to restrict workplace NDAs in the wake of the #MeToo movement. This is that concept, fully fleshed out. The CBIA opposes the bill.
SB 353: Reasonable Accommodations for Menopause-Related Conditions. This bill would expand Connecticut’s employment discrimination law to require employers to provide reasonable accommodations for conditions related to menopause, similar to existing protections for pregnancy. It would also make it a discriminatory practice to deny accommodations, deny job opportunities, force unnecessary leave, or retaliate against an employee for requesting a menopause-related accommodation. Employers would be required to provide written notice of these rights, and the CHRO would develop model workplace policies and educational materials.
Other Key Bills Employers Should Be Tracking
Beyond the bills likely headed for a hearing, several other proposals deserve attention.
SB 435: Automated Decision Systems Protections for Employees. This is a significant one for employers using AI in the hiring process or for other employment decisions. The bill would establish a new regulatory framework requiring employers to provide advance notice to applicants and employees when automated decision systems are used, disclose how personal data is used, and ensure extensive human review before final decisions are made. It mandates annual independent bias audits, public reporting, and creates both Attorney General enforcement and a private right of action. It would also make AI-related issues subject to collective bargaining. For employers embracing AI-driven tools for recruiting, performance management, or workforce analytics, this bill could impose significant compliance obligations.
SB 436: Predictive Scheduling. Another familiar face. This bill would create a predictive scheduling framework for large retail, food service, hospitality, and long-term care employers with 500 or more employees globally, requiring 14-day advance schedule notice, predictability pay for schedule changes, minimum rest periods between shifts, and expanded private enforcement mechanisms. Predictive scheduling has been proposed in prior sessions — I covered a similar bill back in 2023 — and it keeps coming back.
HB 5492: Limitation of Noncompete Agreements. Noncompete reform continues to be a hot topic. This bill would make noncompetes unenforceable for employees earning less than two times the state minimum wage and for independent contractors earning less than five times the minimum wage. For higher-earning exempt employees, noncompetes would only be enforceable if they meet strict conditions, including advance notice, protection of a legitimate business interest, and time limits of one year (or up to two years if the worker is paid salary and benefits during the restriction period). Workers could sue over unlawful agreements, and the Attorney General could investigate and enforce violations. As regular readers know, noncompete reform has been a recurring theme at the General Assembly, and the CBIA opposes this latest version.
HB 5386 and HB 5387: Pay Transparency. Two companion bills that would expand wage transparency requirements. HB 5386 would require employers with 50 or more employees to publish a public guide explaining every overtime and pay differential code they use. HB 5387 would go further, mandating that employers disclose the wage range and a general description of benefits in all public and internal job postings, provide that same information to applicants before any compensation discussions, and annually provide current employees with the wage range for their position. Notably, HB 5387 also implements statutory damages of $1,000 to $10,000, punitive damages, attorney fees, and a two-year window to bring claims. The CBIA opposes both bills.
SB 298: Warehouse Worker Protections. This is an emergency certified bill that targets warehouse distribution centers and has expanded to include additional NAICS codes covering warehouse clubs, supercenters, home centers, and grocery stores, as well as couriers and drivers. It includes a broadly worded private right of action, onerous reporting requirements for warehouses with 250 or more employees that use productivity metrics, and bans on assigning productivity metrics that are less than a full day’s work. If you are in the warehousing, distribution, or grocery space, this one is directly aimed at your operations.
SB 440: Unemployment for Striking Workers. This bill would allow striking workers involved in a labor dispute that has been continuous for fourteen days to access unemployment benefits. This is a significant departure from existing practice and one the CBIA strongly opposes, given that employers are the sole revenue source for the unemployment trust fund. A similar measure passed the Senate back in 2022, so this concept has legs.
SB 358: Service Contract Worker Retention. This bill expands Connecticut’s existing service worker retention law beyond Bradley Airport to cover a wide range of locations, including large residential buildings, office complexes, schools, hospitals, and universities. It requires successor contractors to retain most existing service workers for at least 90 days, limits termination during that period to just cause, and lowers the coverage threshold from 10 employees to just two.
Notable Trends
A few themes emerge from this session’s lineup. First, there is a continued push toward greater wage and pay transparency — a trend we have been tracking on this blog for years. Second, the legislature is clearly interested in regulating AI and automated decision-making in the employment context, which is consistent with what we are seeing nationally. Third, several bills continue the legislature’s recent focus on expanding worker protections in the warehousing and distribution sectors. And finally, the perennial efforts to restrict noncompete agreements and expand predictive scheduling requirements are back once again.
What Should Employers Do?
If any of these bills affect your business, now is the time to act. The public hearings scheduled for the this week are your opportunity to provide testimony or submit written comments. Contact your local legislators to share your perspective.
As always, it’s still early in the session. Not all of these bills will survive the committee process, and some may change significantly before they reach the floor. But as we know from years of watching the General Assembly, even bills that appear “mostly dead” sometimes come back to life — especially at the end of a session.
Stay tuned. There is a lot more to come this spring.