With just a few short weeks until the beginning of the 2016 legislative session, VSEA members conducted an action on December 15 to highlight many state employees’ desire for enhanced workplace safety protections.
Press Coverage:
VTDigger: "State workers rally for safety"
WCAX: "Vt. lawmakers discuss safety of state workers"
The Auditor’s Office has released an audit of the State’s "sole-source" contracting practices, and the findings are not good. Here’s how the Associated Press is reporting the audit:
"Vermont state Auditor Doug Hoffer says his office has found widespread abuse in the state’s contracting practices, with state agencies failing to use competitive bidding when they should."
This is a very important finding, as VSEA members have been asking lawmakers for years to examine the State’s contracting with private vendors. Members were seeing more and more private vendors doing work once done by state employees and they wanted to know if the savings were really there.
Not bidding the contracts is especially offensive when you consider the millions potentially lost that could have protected a key service or position.
The Times Argus reports that the State and lawmakers (and state employees, for that matter) will not have to worry as much about the financial fallout from an Obamacare excise tax called the "Cadillac tax" (a misnomer, as the tax would impact more than 70% of America’s health plans, and 70% of Americans aren’t driving Cadillacs).
This is good news as three VSEA bargaining units prepare for fact finding with the State in January. State negotiators have expressed their concern about the tax’s impact to the state budget, but now, it appears, they have no reason for a knee-jerk reaction.
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With less than a month remaining before the start of the 2016 legislative session, VSEA members recently requested that their union order some yard signs to distribute in communities across Vermont, reminding lawmakers and elected officials that Vermonters support their state employees.
