While we certainly want to share our warmest wishes for a prosperous 2018 for you and your family, we're also reaching out today with an important heads-up. Late in December, Republican legislative leaders began circulating false claims about the labor cost savings produced by the agreements you and your colleagues ratified last summer.

To be clear, our agreements are legal and binding, and any such call to "re-open" talks would be little more than a deceptive political stunt. As union leaders, we have no intention of renegotiating the master agreement covering pensions and health benefits through 2027 or individual contracts covering wages and working conditions for five years.

Instead, we're demanding elected leaders make better choices to close budget shortfalls than shifting more of the burden to working families or cutting vital public services. One such way would be to ask the beneficiaries of recently passed federal tax cuts to do their part for Connecticut in 2018.

Regardless of what politicians may attempt, we're ready to fight forward in 2018. To defend our past gains and secure a better life for all working people, that means demanding an end to the politics as usual that has repeatedly failed our state.