Several contentious labor bills have risen to the top of the 2014 agenda for Vermont lawmakers this year.
A years-in-the-making effort to mandate that businesses provide seven days of paid sick leave to their employees has gained momentum since lawmakers departed in May.
The Senate will also return to a topic that’s produced a series of political skirmishes during the past several years — whether independent child care workers should be able to join a union.
A group of Democratic and Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate will push the Legislature to raise the minimum wage substantially.
The Department of Labor and lawmakers will likely re-evaluate Unemployment Trust Fund benefit and payment rates this year, now that the state’s fund is back in the black. In the aftermath of the IBM layoffs in 2013, the department will ask lawmakers to consider a requirement that large companies release more detailed layoff notifications.
And the Vermont State Employees Association is asking the Legislature to adopt changes to the whistleblower protection law.
Paid sick days
A coalition of 15 groups have been laying the groundwork during the eight off-months to pass H.208, a bill that would require businesses to offer at least seven days of paid sick time to full-time employees and a pro-rated amount of time for part-time employees.
Proponents say the bill will provide greater income stability to low-wage hourly workers, and they argue it will improve public health by encouraging sick employers to stay home from work.
Lining up against the legislation are local groups like the Vermont Grocers Association and the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, which worry about increased costs for businesses.
Jim Harrison, president of the Vermont Grocers Association, explained the group’s stance in an email: “We are already experiencing a loss each year of small stores. Such a mandate will only add to their challenges of staying in business for many of them. Retailers employ a large number of part time employees to help staff seven day a week operations and peak shopping hours. Adding new mandates will likely increase costs to consumers.”
The bill’s proponents estimate it would increase payroll expenses by 1 percent to 2.5 percent for the businesses that don’t currently offer this seven days of paid leave time. They estimate that the bill would affect 25 percent of the state’s businesses — and the 60,000 Vermonters they employ.
The coalition is also bracing for national opposition from groups like the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
“I’m very optimistic that it’s going to pass,” Lindsay DesLauriers of Voices for Vermont’s Children, said. But, she added, the coalition isn’t declaring victory just yet. “It is going to be a heavy lift because we will be facing serious national opposition. There’s no doubt about it that they are going to be putting resources into this fight.”
Similar bills have been floating around for roughly a decade, but none have made it out of committee. H.208 will start out in the House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee, where chairwoman Helen Head, D-South Burlington, said the odds are good that it will pass. Head said that unlike in past years, when the bill sat in her committee because opposition outweighed the support for it, there’s a “good deal of interest” in the House at large, too.
“They [Paid Sick Days Coalition] have rallied a great coalition, which has not been the case in the past. It’s basically grown over time to be a very strong group.”
House Speaker Shap Smith supports the idea — “I think the idea of accrued sick time makes sense, and it’s disappointing that a lot of employers don’t provide it.” — but he’s uncertain it can pass this year. “I think there’s some question as to whether or not it has enough support in the House at the moment.”
Sen. Kevin Mullin, D-Rutland, who chairs the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee, said he is content to let the House “carry the water on this one.”
If the bill does pass in the House, his committee will likely be its first stop in the Senate. “If they pass it, we will take it up,” Mullin said. But, he went on, “There’s no guarantee that we will pass it. As drafted, it has problems.”
Gov. Peter Shumlin has declined to say whether he’ll support the initiative.
Child care unionization
A group of child care workers, backed by the Vermont Early Educators United, an affiliate of the local American Federation of Teachers, will resume their longstanding fight for the legal right to join a union.
Shumlin supports the effort, and the House passed legislation back in 2011 that allows independent child care providers to vote on whether they want to collectively bargain with the state on the subsidy rates provided on behalf of low income families.
But the bill, which was controversial in the House, has met with even greater opposition in the Senate. Despite several creative attempts, it failed to pass again last year.
A similar drive to allow home care workers to unionize was successful, however, and this has emboldened the advocates for child care unionization.
Kay Curtis runs Happy Hands: A School for Little People, Decisions program in Brattleboro and has been advocating for the bill for the last four years. “We are hopeful that the Legislature will support the bill this year, and one of the reasons we are very excited is a similar bill for the home care workers was enacted last year.” Child care workers, Curtis said, deserve the same opportunity to weigh in on subsidy rates and other professional standards. “Decisions are being made about our professions and we want to have a seat at the table when that’s happening.”
But not all child care workers support the effort, and some senators — Mullin chief among them — say collective bargaining would hurt the quality of child care. Mullin, who said he is concerned for the providers who don’t want join and is worried that unionization would “homogenize” child care providers, plans to do what he can to prevent it from passing this year. He expects Senate President Pro-Tem John Campbell to bring it up for a vote on the floor — without the blessing of Mullin’s committee.
Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, who chairs the Education Committee, has been the bill’s lead proponent, said passage of S.52 is a “high priority” for him in 2014.
Even if the bill passes in the Senate, Smith said there’s no guarantee the House will find it amenable this time around. “It was a very difficult bill to pass in the House and it was narrowed substantially [in order to pass].” That “narrow” version might be able to pass again, Smith said, but if its scope expands, it could be a tough sell.
Minimum wage
Mullin was even less enthusiastic about the prospects of passing a bill to raise the minimum wage to $12 (the House version would raise it to $12.50). Lawmakers recently passed legislation linking the minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index. On Jan. 1, minimum wage increased 13 cents to $8.73.
Vermont has one of the highest minimum wage rates in the nation, but the bill’s sponsors in the Senate point out that $8.73 is lower than the 1968 rate in inflation-adjusted dollars, and they argue the increased costs that would be passed on to consumers are negligible. They also make the case that the state will spend less on benefits programs for low-income Vermonters by increasing their wages.
Mullin’s take? “Talk about the biggest inflationary jump and job-loser in the state,” he said. “Obviously, I don’t have a lot of love for it.”
The Vermont Chamber of Commerce and the Vermont Grocers Association also oppose the proposal.
“I think a 50 percent increase in the minimum wage is quite substantial and would be incredibly difficult for any employer of any size to absorb,” Bishop said.
Harrison said the move would simply prompt employers to distribute wages differently, at the expense of seasoned full-time workers.
There hasn’t been much discussion among House members about the legislation, according to Smith. “I think it’s worth reviewing the minimum wage law that we have now. We haven’t had a lot of discussion about whether we would move such a bill this year, but it’s worth taking a look at.”
Senate Democrats asked Shumlin what he thought of the idea during their pre-session caucus. His response was noncommittal. “I’m willing to enter into any conversation about ways to ensure we have an equitable minimum wage,” Shumlin said. But, he added, “Obviously with everything we do, the devil is always in the details.”
Other issues
Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan is encouraging legislators to consider instituting stricter layoff notices from major employers. She said that, in the wake of several prominent layoffs in 2013, officials are finding the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act “a little bit weak.” Vermont currently enforces the federal law along with its own Employment Security Board rules, but could become one of many states to adopt its own WARN Act mandating more notice about layoffs.
When workers are laid off, their jobless benefits are paid from the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund. That pot of money has largely recovered from its crisis point in 2010, when the state took a $77.7 million federal bailout. Cuts to benefits and increases in trust fund contributions from employers were negotiated at the time. With the federal loan paid off two years early, the road to solvency is expected to trigger a debate over restoration of benefits or relaxing of employer contributions in the near future.
Meanwhile, federal benefits for the long-term unemployed were curtailed at the close of 2013, affecting about 650 Vermonters. Noonan told the Times Argus that, without restoration by Congress in early 2014, those individuals will be in dire straights. She said the department has reached out to all affected and is doing what it can to help connect them with assistance and job placement services.
But the topic of workforce development carries its own complications. Lawrence Miller, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, told the House Commerce Committee in December that inadequate “workforce availability and preparedness” are the biggest issues he hears from businesses about.
Miller and many lawmakers are looking to the work done in 2013 by the Workforce Development Work Group Shumlin announced last summer.
One legislator who spearheaded the creation of that group, however, is not encouraged by its results. Rep. Michelle Kupersmith, D-South Burlington, told the House Commerce Committee, “If the group highlighted anything, it’s that we simply don’t have expertise to know what we should be doing for our citizens as well as our businesses.” Inconsistent data collection, she said, is a major obstacle to measuring the reach of each workforce development program in Vermont, much less comparing the efficacy of one to another.
Change to whistleblower protection law
The Vermont State Employees Association wants legislators to add a clause to the Public Records Act that would protect the identity of workers who pass information on to the State Auditor’s office about fraud, waste or mismanagement in state government.
Last month, Doug Hoffer, the State Auditor, told a legislative panel that under current law, if a member of the public or press asks him to reveal the name of the whistleblower, he is obliged to provide it.
A recent survey conducted by VSEA shows that the overwhelming majority of workers don’t report problems to the auditor’s office because they are afraid of retaliation from their superiors. More employees would come forward, the VSEA says, if they knew their identities would be protected under the law.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 7 a.m. Jan. 4.