[A]s state employees and Gov. Phil Scott are poised to begin the next round of contract negotiations this summer, a new law will give the parties the option to skirt the state’s labor relations board, and instead rely on an independent arbitrator, if they can’t reach a final agreement.
Vermont’s state employees pressed for the new law in the Legislature this year after a major dispute over one of Scott’s appointments to the Vermont Labor Relations Board in 2018.
The Vermont State Employees Association also objected to the Labor Board siding with the Scott administration’s position on contract negotiations last year.
The new law signed by Scott last month will allow state and union negotiators to hire an independent arbitrator to make final rulings on contract disagreements if they don’t want the decision to be made by the state’s labor review board.
In 2018, unions, including VSEA, which represents most state employees, protested Scott’s appointment of attorney Karen O’Neill to a neutral seat on the board.
O’Neill has a long history of serving in management positions which garnered criticism from labor groups and many Democrats. Because she had no labor experience, they said she wasn’t qualified to hold the seat.
The Democratically controlled Senate ultimately declined to confirm O’Neill.
But not before O’Neill cast a crucial vote with a majority of board members to impose the governor’s last best offer in 2018 contract negotiations, which the union criticized for setting low pay raises and cuts to health coverage.
“The damage to the process last time was so severe that our members lost all belief in the process, and said ‘We want an independent arbitrator,’” said Steve Howard, the executive director of the VSEA.
Under the new law, only one of the parties needs to ask for an independent arbitrator for one to be granted, but both parties need to agree on the person who is hired to do the job.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Wilmington, who called O’Neill’s appointment to the board “politicized,” said he sponsored the legislation because after last year’s dispute, he wanted to provide a “second neutral option” for resolving contract issues.
“I think this gives state employees an option if they’re not comfortable with the labor board of going to arbitration, which still puts it in front of a neutral who will be able to review the proposed collective bargaining agreement,” he said.
The Scott administration has supported the change. In a letter to lawmakers in June, the governor wrote that he didn’t think the law would have a “dramatic effect on current practice” when it comes to negotiations between the state and its employees.
Vermont’s Human Resources Commissioner Beth Fastiggi agreed, and said that ideally employees and the state should reach an agreement, instead of letting a third party make a decision for them.
“I don’t think that it will make a difference,” Fastiggi said.
“Any time that you’re going to last best offer you’re putting the decision in somebody else’s hands rather than the parties that are most affected. So it is much better if the parties can come to an agreement at the bargaining table,” she said.”
Howard also said that the union always hopes to reach an agreement with the state over going to a third party. But he added that employees now appreciate that they have an option to take contract disputes to an independent arbitrator.
“Both sides always want to get a deal at the table and we think that the new arbitration law makes that possibility more likely,” he said.
The board has only had to make final rulings on contract disputes between the VSEA and the state on four occasions—three out of four times, with the exception of last year, it sided with the union, according to Howard.
Timothy Noonan, the executive director of the Vermont Labor Relations Board, said he could not comment on the new law. The board, he said, “typically doesn’t take positions on matters of public policy.”
But he reiterated that the “desirable thing” in negotiations between the state and employees is that “the parties reach their own agreement and not have to have a third party intervene.”
State employees and the Scott administration will begin negotiations over a new two-year contract in the coming months. Both parties said it was too early to discuss their possible contract proposals.
The current contract for state employees will expire in July 2020.
