Alliance between Shumlin, VSEA frays

Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding. VTD/Josh Larkin

VSEA members miffed by administration’s handling of pay cuts, hiring freeze, double-time grievance and state hospital closure

Within hours of being sworn in as governor, Peter Shumlin sat down with officials from the state employees union and outlined a non-negotiable offer. In the face of a $175 million budget shortfall, the new administration wouldn’t make further reductions in the state workforce — if the Vermont State Employees Association agreed to a hiring freeze that would further reduce the state workforce and save the state between $4 million and $5 million.

Union officials say they were blindsided by the proposal. Members of the 5,500 state workers’ association had been crucial to Shumlin’s victory in the 2010 general election, and the last thing union leaders expected from a Democrat was another work force reduction.

VSEA originally backed state Sen. Doug Racine in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but as soon as Shumlin won the nomination, union members threw themselves behind the Democrat to block the election of Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, who they believed would perpetuate the Douglas administration’s anti-union stance.

State workers, union officials said, felt beleaguered by Republican Gov. Jim Douglas and his team, which looked for opportunities to aggressively cut state government as the recession worsened. Over the course of the last three years, about 660 positions were eliminated out of more than 7,000 total state employees. State workers agreed to take a 3 percent pay cut as part of a deal with Douglas and the Legislature.

With a Democrat in office, union members hoped for a kinder, gentler rapport with the Fifth Floor. But the governor has stunned the VSEA with public pronouncements in advance of discussions with union leaders, and several of Shumlin’s recent press statements have led union members to suspect that the governor wants to malign state workers in order to build a case for cutting wages and positions in advance of collective bargaining. Members of the administration flatly reject that assertion.

Conor Casey, acting executive director of the VSEA, said in an interview last week, “There’s a lot of anxiety in the work force about the governor’s press statements.”

The latest donnybrooks are over the fate of Vermont State Hospital workers, fears that the 3 percent pay cut may be perpetuated and a grievance filed by 90 workers charging that under the contract the Shumlin administration is required to pay double-time wages to employees who were asked to continue working in the immediate aftermath of the flooding of the Waterbury State Office Complex.

Several weeks ago, Shumlin sang the praises of state workers for their indefatigable commitment to the post-Irene recovery, and then criticized the 90-odd union members who filed the grievance demanding double-time pay for emergency work after Tropical Storm Irene. The cost to compensate the workers would be at least $1 million.

Gov. Peter Shumlin with Keith Flynn, commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. VTD/Taylor Dobbs

“I can’t express enough my dismay that the 90 state employees who are doing an extraordinary disservice to the rest of our employees when they don’t deserve it,” Shumlin told reporters the first week of October. “The notion that we would have hard- working transportation workers rebuilding roads and bridges. and then someone who is displaced from an office getting paid double time while the transportation worker is getting paid as they normally would, just seems extraordinarily unfair. I have urged the state employees union to withdraw their grievance and to join state employees who have worked so hard to get us back on track.”

Shortly after Shumlin made this announcement at a press conference, about 10 workers withdrew from the grievance.

In a statement, John Reese, the newly installed president of VSEA, in a veiled reference, compared Shumlin to Scott Walker, the union-busting Republican governor of Wisconsin, and urged the Vermont governor to “end this war of words” in the public sphere and “let this matter be settled at the Labor Board where it belongs.”

“Simply put, VSEA believes the Administration’s stance on this issue is misguided and contrary to the spirit of the State Employee Labor Relations Act,” Reese wrote in a statement. “If the State’s interpretation of the emergency closure provision in the contract is correct then State officials have nothing to worry about should this case reach the Labor Board. To single out people for exercising their legal rights is an affront to fairness.”

The governor, however, hasn’t let up on press blasts since his first salvo. Last week, Shumlin told reporters after the announcement that the Vermont State Hospital would be permanently closed that he has “an issue” with anyone seeking double-time – including “those who have been treating our most vulnerable,” because there have been “lots of heroes in this storm” (he pointed to transportation workers again), and “we’re not going to choose among our heroes.”

“The point is, no one should financially benefit from a crisis, and this is no time to grieve,” Shumlin said last Thursday. “I’ve asked the state employees who filed that grievance to withdraw it. And my resolve is no less strong today than it was yesterday. They should withdraw the grievance in the interest of all state employees because it’s giving a black eye to all 1,420 state employees who have not filed a grievance for double time.”

An unrelated overtime case may also dog the administration. In 2009, workers filed a class action lawsuit against the Douglas administration for refusing to pay overtime to certain workers. Thomas Somers, the lawyer in the case, says the Shumlin administration isn’t taking that case “seriously.” The lawsuit, which will likely settle out of court, could cost the state $8 million to $10 million, he said.

The 3 percent difference

Union leaders point to budget instructions from Jim Reardon, commissioner of the Department of Finance and Management, requesting that all departments cut expenditures by 4 percent, as proof that the administration wants to perpetuate the 3 percent pay cut instituted in 2009, which is worth about $9.2 million a year, instead of allowing the provision to sunset at the end of the current contract on June 30, 2012.

Jeb Spaulding, secretary of the Agency of Administration, flatly denies that charge.

The preliminary consensus budget developed by the Joint Fiscal Office and the Department of Finance and Management, which was released last week, seems to indicate that the administration is serious about that promise – it includes a $19.2 million line item for salary, benefit and pension “pressures.”

Does this mean the administration has relented on its insistence that departments across state government reduce expenditures by 4 percent? Not at all, the administration insists.

Reardon calls the $19.2 million a “management tool,” and he said that figure won’t necessarily be the actual amount budgeted by the administration and the Legislature for increased state employee expenditures.

Commissioner of the Department of Finance and & Management Jim Reardon. VTD/Josh Larkin

Whether that placeholder figure will be enough to cover increases in employee-related costs for fiscal year 2013 is anyone’s guess. The state and VSEA enter the collective bargaining process this year, and increases in pension and benefit costs are expected. Meanwhile, there is mounting pressure from the VSEA to restore the 3 percent or $9.2 million in salary losses incurred by members year over year from 2009 to 2012.

The VSEA’s Casey expressed frustration in an interview.

“I don’t know what the administration’s motivations are these days for doing anything that they’re doing,” he said. “I will say that I disagree with their methodology and their budget instructions. Clearly, what they’re doing is underfunding our contracts by not including the restoration of the 3 percent. I believe that’s part of this contract, not the next contract. They’re starting off on a bad foot with bargaining.”

Fate of Vermont State Hospital employees uncertain

Shumlin announced last week that his administration would permanently close the Vermont State Hospital facility in Waterbury, which employed 240 workers.

He said 15 patients with acute psychiatric conditions would be sent to the Brattleboro Retreat, 15 would be treated in a new centralized state facility at Pine Ridge in Williston or at the Central Vermont Medical Center campus in Berlin, and an undetermined number of patients would receive home-based care or go to two new “step- down” facilities like Second Spring in Williamstown, which provides transitional services for patients. The Vermont State Hospital served about 50 patients at any given time, or about 250 per year.

The governor said state workers who are not part of the new system would be reassigned.

“We are going to utilize the state employees wherever they can be used,” Shumlin said. “They’ve been extraordinarily helpful to us in this transition. They provide quality care, and we’re going to be working together with the VSEA to figure out how we can best utilize the state employees in this transition plan. All the answers aren’t clear. As you can tell, we don’t know exactly what options are going to work.”

Casey said the union wants the state to follow its original plan for closing the state hospital, which involved building a forensic psychiatric facility, plus a new 50-bed acute care hospital.

The community system the administration is proposing shouldn’t be a replacement for state hospital beds, he said, and the state should be loath to lay off state hospital workers, given their treatment expertise with acute psychiatric patients.

“Vermont’s system needs to have a safety net,” Casey said. “There need to be places where people are never turned away and who are redirected to homeless shelters and prisons.”

State hospital employees, Casey said, have made tremendous personal sacrifices since Irene destroyed the hospital. They continue to work long shifts and many are far from home.

A third of the workers listed on the grievance complaint are Vermont State Hospital employees who have been obliged to rent hotel rooms or embark on long commutes, in order to follow patients to facilities in Rutland, Springfield, Brattleboro and Burlington.

Casey said the union and the administration are trying to set up a meeting in the coming week.

Clarification: Secretary of the Agency of Administration Jeb Spaulding says the administration has not said one way or another whether money for the 3 percent pay cut is included in the consensus budget document. “What I’ve said right along, and it’s been reported in more than one place … is the 3 percent pay cut and the fact that we didn’t include anything in our budget document for agencies and departments doesn’t say anything about what our position is. We’re going into negotiations, and we don’t want to lay our cards on the table before we’ve begun. I expect us and the VSEA to negotiate in good faith. I’ve never said one way or another what our position is.” We originally reported that Spaulding said he wanted to restore the 3 percent cut at the end of fiscal year 2012.