Dear Judiciary Members:
Before summing up what’s been happening, allow us first to invite you to join us at our next bargaining session on Friday, January 22, beginning at 8:30 a.m. at the AOT Training Center in Berlin, Vermont. Details are below.
On Friday, January 15, we met with the CAO for a second time to discuss our non-financial proposals. We remained faithful to our commitment to improve working conditions and satisfy the needs of the membership while management made accommodating gestures towards our proposals throughout the latter half of the day.
We opened with a statement from Cindy Foster about the impact of low morale on the Judiciary’s over-arching mission to provide access to justice and quality public service. As management sought to support its proposals by outlining goals of predictability and streamlined processes, Cindy noted:
"Putting the welfare of your employees ahead of your streamlined processes and predictable scenarios MIGHT provide a chance for the Vermont Judiciary, at all levels, to start a dialogue based on true ‘good faith.’ Be assured that a proposal consisting entirely of takeaways will erode any existing fragments of trust and respect."
Dear Judiciary Members,
On January 8, we met with the CAO at the Costello Courthouse to discuss our non-financial proposals. While we brought forward proposals to improve union rights, call-in pay, opportunities for advancement, training, and the reclassification system, among other working conditions, the Judiciary Administration proposed gutting our contract under the guise of making the Judiciary more "efficient, streamlined, and fiscally responsible."
The Administration proposed the following cuts to the quality of our work:
- More power to relocate staff long distances, including, forcing employees to voluntarily resign from their duties upon turning down a work reassignment, hence taking away RIF rights for employees who choose not to relocate for conscientious reasons
- Eliminate the oral warnings in the performance evaluation and disciplinary processes, which is the first step in progressive discipline
- Bargaining commencement as late as January, after the start of the Legislative Session
- Limit VSEA Committee participation by Judiciary Members and eliminate steward training hence weakening your union
- More power for the CAO to shift and consolidate positions with greater ease
Want to read more? Our opening non-financial proposal as well as management’s are in the members-only Judiciary folder on the VSEA website.
"The people we never hear from are the people who actually do the work. And this is by design. The work that DCF caseworkers do is intensely private, and in order to protect the privacy of parents and children, caseworkers are not allowed to talk publicly about their cases. In a way, their silence shields us from some of the darkest, most complex, most intractable problems in our state. These are the problems that DCF caseworkers live with every day."
Be advised there is some difficult content discussed here.
VSEA thanks the workers who agreed to be interviewed for this piece. Your union appreciates the important work you do every day–24/7.
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In this week’s issue:
Unions bargaining new contracts in the first three quarters of 2015 did pretty well, the AFL-CIO says in a new report. Using data from a Bloomberg BNA analysis of contract settlements, the federation said that new contracts provided a weighted-average first-year raise of four percent (including lump sum payments), an increase from the 2.9 percent increase in 2014. “The final 2015 weighted average first-year wage increase could surpass 4.2 percent, the highest weighted average since 2001,” the federation said.
View the AFL-CIO’s full report here.
Meanwhile in Vermont, three VSEA Bargaining Units (representing thousands of state employees across Vermont, like the AOT members pictured here) remain in tough negotiations with the State on new successor agreements. It’s the first time in three contract cycles (under the current Governor) that VSEA members have been forced in front of a fact finder to plead their case.
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