[A] bill that would have prohibited teacher strikes and prevented school boards from imposing contract terms was shelved Tuesday by the Senate Committee on Education.
The bill, S.157, also would have required that collective bargaining occur in public.
The vote to drop the legislation was 4-2, with Democrats against the bill and Republicans supporting it. Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, sponsored the measure.
Committee Chair Philip Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, said the main problem was the bill didn’t offer a way to resolve a standoff between bargaining sides. It would have created a committee to figure out the best way to resolve a dispute.
Nicole Mace, head of the Vermont School Boards Association, said her members voted to support the bill.
Vermont is one of 12 states where teachers are allowed to strike and boards to impose contract terms, according to the association. It is the only one in New England where that is the case.
“When the differences between the parties are so great that the collective bargaining process breaks down, and the parties resort to imposition of a contract or a strike, the impacts on the community are significant and are often felt for many years,” Mace told the Senate panel.
Sheramy Tsai, of South Burlington, testified that contract negotiations last fall were damaging to her community. “While South Burlington averted a 2017 strike, the emotional toll that the possible impending strike had on the community was no different than if we had actually experienced another one,” she said.
But the overwhelming majority of contract talks end well, according to the Vermont-NEA, the state’s largest teachers union. Over the past 50 years there have been only 27 strikes and 24 instances where school boards imposed contract terms, the union says.
Jeff Fannon, executive director of the Vermont-NEA, said the past year is evidence that nothing is wrong with the collective bargaining process. Every contract has had to be renegotiated over the past year to move teachers to a new health care system, and fewer than 10 remain unresolved, he said.
“To say we have a problem with the collective bargaining process is not borne out by the facts,” he said.
The House could still revive the measure. Rep. Kurt Wright, R-Burlington, has a version of the same bill ready to go.
