This commentary is by Elizabeth Brown, who is the Vermont state director of the Fiscal Alliance Foundation.
Vermont workers already have the right to bargain. Proposal 3 would lock in a system that costs us jobs, investment and taxes.
According to a new analysis published by our organization, the Fiscal Alliance Foundation, Vermont’s population fell last year by a larger share than that of any other state. From 2015 to 2025, private-sector jobs grew 12.6% nationally. In Vermont, they fell 0.6%. Only two other states went backward. Our cost of living runs 13.5% above average, and after adjusting for it, we rank 42nd in disposable income per person.
What does that have to do with Proposal 3? Unions fight for better benefits and higher wages, but a bigger paycheck only helps if it goes farther. In states without right-to-work laws, living costs run 16.6% above the national average. In right-to-work states, they run 4.3% below. Once you account for what things cost, people in right-to-work states take home about $3,500 more per person each year. Proposal 3 expands union power in ways that will cost Vermonters in jobs, investment and taxes.
Prop 3 is being sold as a way to protect workers’ right to bargain collectively. That right is already protected by state law. Prop 3 does not create collective bargaining. It moves our labor laws out of the Legislature’s hands and into the state constitution.
But it goes beyond that. First, it bars any law that stops unions and employers from making union membership a condition of employment. That takes away employee choice and permanently rules out a right-to-work law. The Vermont AFL-CIO says as much in its own materials.
Second, it sets a new test for every labor law on the books. No law may interfere with, negate or diminish the right to bargain. That puts existing labor statutes in question, including limits on public-employee strikes and on what school boards must bargain over. That could leave judges, rather than the people we elect, to decide which laws survive.
Supporters want to protect a right before anyone threatens it. But no one in Montpelier is threatening collective bargaining.
Over the past decade, private-sector jobs grew 17.2% in right-to-work states, nearly twice the rate of the rest. Economists comparing neighboring counties across state lines found about 28% more manufacturing jobs on the right-to-work side. States that adopt right-to-work see venture capital investment rise 68% to 82%, according to a study in the Journal of Banking and Finance. That is the money that starts new companies.
Look at dairy. From 2018 to 2025, milk output grew about 15.7% in right-to-work dairy states and about 0.1% in the rest. Vermont’s fell 6%. Prop 3 gives investors one more reason to look elsewhere. Shouldn’t we be doing everything possible to bring opportunity to Vermont?
State and local taxes already take 13.6% of Vermonters’ income. Only New York, Connecticut and Hawaii take more. States with the most unionized public workforces carry tax burdens about 32% higher than the least unionized. Vermont is one of them, with just over 46% of public employees covered by union representation, 10 points above the national average. We also have the second-highest per-pupil spending in the country, behind only New York, according to the National Education Association’s most recent Rankings of the States report, while results decline. Prop 3 would make it almost impossible for future lawmakers to rein in those costs. Vermont property tax payers will be left to foot the bill.
Illinois offers a warning about where this could lead. In 2025, lawmakers added an estimated $11 billion in new liabilities to Chicago’s police and fire pensions with no new revenue to pay for them. Illinois now ranks first in the country for state pension debt per person. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, more than 350 state laws could eventually be overridden by union contracts.
Supporters predicted a dozen states would follow Illinois. None has. Even California let its version die in committee.
Vermont workers would retain the robust protections they have today without Proposal 3. The state would also retain its ability to change course in the future if it becomes necessary. Constitutions are for lasting principles, not for freezing one side of a policy debate in place. Vermont cannot afford to lock in the status quo.
