UPDATED-Overreach: Tong Takes Aim at Workers’ Rights. AG-Elect Wants to Replace Classified Employees.

Attorney General-elect William Tong may want to take a look at the state’s statutes before authorizing his transition team to send an ominous memo to AG lawyers. Tong and his transition team told lawyers that they will entertain candidates for, among other positions, department heads. Those positions, however, are in the classified service. Employees may only be removed by layoffs for lack of work– not likely, mate, when you are looking for replacements–or for cause. It would be unsettling if Tong is conniving to use cause before he’s taken office.

Tong and his team may want to look at Connecticut General Statutes Section 5-240. The smartest man in any room’s initial foray into labor law has left nerves jangling in the AG’s office.

Memo to Tong: Connecticut General Statutes are the codified laws of our sovereign state. No one is above them.

UPDATE: Wednesday was a busy day for lawyers at the attorney general’s office. Attorney General-elect William Tong’s menacing transition memo prompted lawyers in the office to have a look at Bysiewicz v. DiNardo. Others searched online court records to see how busy a litigator Tong has been. Unanimous conclusion: Not very. Wags did note that one of Tong’s few appearances was to quash a subpoena directed at another lawyer in his firm–who now heads the transition team.

Tong appears to struggle to understand the essentials of labor relations law other than as campaign rhetoric. Threatening the jobs of members while they are in an arbitration could be seen as an unfair labor practice. One suspects the mayor of Gotham did not trouble himself with such things at Phillips Academy Andover, Brown and the University of Chicago.