[A] controversial bill that would have banned teacher strikes and contract impositions was reduced to a study committee on Wednesday and was killed outright Thursday.
The scaled down version of the bill, H.76, was rejected by a House vote of 104-43.
The original language of H.76 bill was struck on Wednesday, after nearly five hours of debate.
The bill was replaced with a study in which a seven-member task force would review school labor issues. The task force was to issue a report to the Legislature in the fall. Rep. Willem Jewett, D-Ripton, introduced the study on the floor of the House Wednesday.
Rep. Kurt Wright, R-Burlington, said he plans to discuss the ban on teacher strikes and contract impositions with his counterparts in the Senate, to see if there is any interest in advancing what narrowly failed in the House this session.
Several lawmakers who had promised to vote with Wright’s amendment were out ill on Wednesday, costing him critical votes, he said. He said two Republican lawmakers, Reps. Chuck Pearce, R-Richford, and Constance Quimby, R-Concord, were ill Wednesday and came to the Statehouse on Thursday to vote for reconsideration of the legislation. He said a Democratic lawmaker, who was also out, had promised support as well.
Rep. Patti Komline, R-Dorset, who switched her vote Wednesday on the floor explained, “I changed my vote in order to have the option today [Thursday] of a vote of reconsideration. We were missing two members and were hoping they would be in today and I could ask for another vote.
“I didn’t end up doing that because I was given heads-up by a couple of Democrats that they were told to make sure to vote against my request to reconsider my vote, thus preventing another vote on the LaLonde amendment,” she said, referring to Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, who offered the unsuccessful amendment on prohibiting strikes and contract imposition Wednesday.
The hoped-for reconsideration never got onto the floor, because the votes were not there, Wright said.
House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, said House leadership did reach out to party caucuses about the bill, but said, “In the end, I don’t think it mattered,” saying the votes were not there for reconsideration of the bill Thursday.
“I think at some point we’ve got to look at this and we’ll figure out if we need a study or not,” Smith said Thursday.
He said that could happen outside of legislation in the future.
Wright said he was opposed to a study group so its failure was not what upset him as much as seeing the heart of the bill stripped away the day before.
“The biggest part of the bill always was banning strikes and impositions,” he said.
Before the vote, Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton, the House Minority Leader, said the bill’s failure means that “Vermont students, parents, teachers and school board members will continue to suffer with the fear that they will be next,” to have a teachers strike.
The Vermont National Education Association was pleased by the failure of H.76.
Darren Allen, spokesman for the teachers’ union, some 10,000 strong, said the majority of the House agreed that the 45-year collective bargaining process now in place works.
“There is no need to upend collective bargaining,” Allen said.
