A member of the state employees’ union board of trustees has quit his leadership position, because of what he says is a refusal by the union to denounce hate speech.
Josh Cox, an emergency management coordinator for the state, sent a letter of resignation to the board on Wednesday, saying that given the “long and consistent record of silence from VSEA leadership to condemn harassment and hate speech,” he felt there was no ethical course of action other than to tender his resignation immediately.
Cox served as clerk of the 18-member board. He held the position for a little over a year.
The move follows a December incident wherein a corrections officer — a union member — wrote a hateful and transphobic Facebook post about one of the incarcerated people he was supervising. In subsequent media coverage after the worker was fired, Steve Howard, executive director of the VSEA, called the incident a “personnel matter,” while board president Aimee Towne reminded union members to post cautiously on social media.
“It is not hard or difficult to condemn hate speech either occurring within VSEA or outside of it, but it appears that VSEA leadership is largely incapable of any meaningful and consistent action on this topic other than silence,” Cox wrote in his letter.
Cox said he feels the VSEA is entering a “dark chapter” in its 76-year history, where things like clearly articulated hate speech aren’t immediately condemned.
“I resigned purely because I hit my threshold for this kind of behavior. It’s not some sort of declaration of a big movement,” Cox said.
A progressive caucus is building within the organization that shares his frustrations. Of the 18-member board, there were consistently six or seven people that voted with him on these kinds of issues, but as the minority, he said, their side of the organization isn’t seen by the public.
Towne said she was “frustrated” that Cox went public with his grievances, rather than staying in the clerk position to help facilitate change internally. She said Cox had “multiple opportunities and venues” to share his grievances directly with the board, but instead went to the public.
When she became VSEA president four months ago, Towne ran on a platform of transparency. She proposed opening board meetings to VSEA members, creating time for people to report on concerns within membership and adding a monthly members forum to address questions and problems.
“It is incredibly unfortunate for everyone that he chose not to voice any grievances in the open, which is why his outreach to the press is confusing. I can’t tell you what his motivation was,” she said.
Cox said he’s consistently voted in favor of resolutions condemning hate speech and supporting marginalized union members, but the proposals were swept aside by leadership.
“You can support a member’s job and conditions of their employment, but if a member clearly articulates hate speech, I don’t think it should be hard to say it’s wrong and deal with it in that manner,” Cox said.
Even better, Cox said, would be for the union to take tangible actions to support the LGBTQ and Black, Indiginous and people of color communities that they say they support.
Howard said the VSEA never condoned the corrections employee’s post earlier this month. Rather, he said, the union took issue with the fact that the employee was fired without just cause, as he wasn’t given an opportunity for progressive discipline before being terminated.
“No one justifies what he said or the subject of his Facebook post. The VSEA does not tolerate hate speech. To misinterpret this representation of him in an employment matter as accepting what he said is not at all the case,” Howard said.
Cox also listed a number of similar instances over the past 18 months where he says the union failed to speak out, beginning with a 2018 report by Seven Days of the culture of sexual harassment and exploitation within the Department of Corrections.
He also noted a “coordinated public campaign of harassment” this summer from several members of the VSEA corrections unit toward a VSEA member trying to advance racial justice issues within the union. He said leadership never condemned their behavior in a “consistent and meaningful way.”
The other incident that Cox specified in his letter of resignation was a September meeting of the VSEA that was held on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, despite “repeated requests” from Jewish union members to postpone it until after the holiday.
Cox asserted the requests were not taken seriously by VSEA leadership, and as such, Jewish union members were excluded from the meeting.
Howard took issue with that representation, saying the union consulted with Jewish faith leaders before the meeting, and learned that Rosh Hashanah would begin at sundown. Howard said they held the meeting before the sunset to accommodate Jewish union members.
Additionally, he said, the meeting was three minutes long and was held only to comply with bylaws, so that another committee could begin its work. He said the meeting was simply procedural.
Cox said that shouldn’t matter. He said if people asked days in advance for the meeting to be moved to accommodate their faith that should have happened.
“For him to continue with that tired argument of why he feels it was right to exclude Jewish members from a VSEA meeting I think clearly demonstrates the failure of the leadership of the VSEA right now,” Cox said.
As a result of a number of those issues, in September, four candidates for the Vermont House declined the VSEA’s endorsement, citing “harmful inconsistencies” in the union’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Howard said in both that situation and this one, people opted to make public statements rather than having face-to-face conversations, which he said is much harder and more important work.
“As an openly gay man suceeding an openly gay man who succeeded a transgender executive director who suceeded a female executive director, who serves a president who’s the first woman of color to lead our labor union, the VSEA is very proud of being an inclusive organization,” Howard said.
“We don’t think we’re perfect,” Howard said. “We think we can do better and we’re committed to that.”