[N]egotiations over a statewide health care benefit for Vermont’s more than 40,000 school employees and their families have further deteriorated, and school boards have backed away from talks scheduled for Friday.
Legislators last year created a 10-member commission tasked with negotiating a deal for a statewide benefit. The commission includes five representatives from the union side – four from the Vermont-NEA, and one from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees – and five representatives from school boards.
At issue is whether the unions can include five “alternate” commissioners in negotiations. The Vermont-NEA argues alternates would prevent delays in the process by stepping in as voting members if a union representative can’t make it to a meeting and lend a wider perspective to talks. The school boards, meanwhile, maintain alternates aren’t allowed under the law, and, at the outset of bargaining, filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Vermont Labor Relations Board over the matter.
The two sides have met twice since bargaining officially began on April 1, with the alternates present. Joseph McNeil, an attorney representing the school boards, said his side asked the unions not to bring alternates “as a matter of good faith” before the next round of talks. The unions refused.
Will Adams, a spokesperson for the union’s commissioners, dismissed the school boards’ objections to the alternates as little more than a stalling tactic.
“They have now come to the conclusion that they can now no longer meet over this really kind of frivolous question. It really makes us wonder how serious they are about trying to address the task that the Legislature set for us,” said Adams, who is also a teacher in Hardwick.
The next negotiating session is scheduled for May 23. If there is no Labor Board decision by then, McNeil said the school boards still haven’t decided whether to come back to the table.
“We also recognize we’re under a tight statutory deadline,” he said.
If the two sides can’t come to an agreement by Aug. 1, an impasse will be declared. That means negotiations will continue before a mediator. If mediation doesn’t work, and a deal isn’t hammered out by mid-November, then talks will move into binding arbitration.
According to timelines set out in law, new plans are supposed to go into effect July 1, 2020. But both sides will be asking the Legislature to change that date to Jan. 1, 2021, since health insurance plans are on a calendar year schedule.
Meanwhile, opening offers from both sides have been wide apart on the substance of the negotiations — how much teachers pay into the health insurance system.
The school boards have pitched a two-year deal in which all employees – teachers, administrators, and support staff alike – pay for 30% of premiums. The unions have proposed a four-year plan that would preserve existing, locally negotiated premium cost-sharing agreements. The NEA has said that would allow more time to craft an income-sensitive model in which higher-paid employees would pay more for health care.
The school boards and unions have discussed benefits over the last two round of talks, but both Adams and McNeil appeared to agree there has been little progress thus far on finding a middle road.
“We are not presently close,” McNeil said.
