VSEA General Counsel (& Interim Director) Michael Casey’s Statement On Emergency Additional Compensation
Casey’s statement addresses story in this morning’s Times Argus, alleging a "tussle" between VSEA and the State on emergency additional compensation.
“The existing collective bargaining agreement provides the State all the flexibility it needed to reassign employees after the storm without having to pay them any added compensation. VSEA officials do not understand why the State did not officially reassign employees to new work locations immediately after the storm, particularly since the union had discussed such measures the first day the State reopened. We discussed that because it would allow state employees to return to work immediately, without requiring them to be paid additional compensation. It came as a shock to us that the State had not reassigned people, as the contract allows them to, and that once officials realized their mistake, they expected the union to ‘fix’ it by pretending that the employees had no right to added compensation under the contract because of the failure to reassign them. Legally we cannot do that. VSEA has worked from day one to work with the State to return state employees to work as quickly as possible with no added cost to the taxpayers, including proposing to allow employees to work from home on a voluntary basis.”