State police weigh VSEA
Toolbox
By Louis Porter VERMONT PRESS BUREAU - Published: August 6, 2009
MONPELIER — The rank and file of the state police may leave the union representing the bulk of the state workers and create an independent organization.
The Vermont State Employees Association is made up of a half-dozen different bargaining units but functions together to represent nearly 6,000 state employees, including the state troopers.
However, the members of the state police who are sergeants and below in rank — about 270 in all — have asked the Vermont Labor Relations Board to decertify the VSEA as their representative for contract negotiations. If successful, that effort would effectively mean the new Vermont Troopers' Association would become the union for those officers.
A vote by secret ballot of the troopers who would qualify to be part of the new association will be held before the matter is decided. But according to the petition filed Tuesday with the labor relations board, "well over" the 30 percent of members needed to move the matter ahead signed cards asking for the vote.
"We were asked by our membership to petition the labor board to leave the VSEA and become an independent unit," said Sgt. Michael O'Neil, head of the state police bargaining unit. "We have a job that is much different than other state employees and we want to deal with just our issues."
Lt. William Harkness, president of the VSEA, said if members want to split off from the union, that's their right.
"Unions are based on democracy. If a group of our memberships makes a decision … we respect their wishes," said Harkness. As a lieutenant in the state police, Harkness is part of the supervisory unit portion of the VSEA, not the troopers' bargaining unit.
Over recent months, as reductions in expected state revenue have led to cuts in state spending and layoffs of state workers, the sworn officers among state police and other public safety employees, such as corrections officers, have been protected from those cuts. Meanwhile, the state employees' union has negotiated — unsuccessfully so far — with administration officials over benefits and other concessions that could reduce the number of those layoffs.
But union officials for both the VSEA and the troopers said Tuesday that the differences in their position relative to those cutbacks did not lead to the potential split.
"We are under the same pressure all of the state employees are," O'Neil said, although he added the troopers were not facing the same possibility of layoffs as other state workers.
"No matter who represents us, we are all state employees," Harkness said. "We just will not be their bargaining agent."
Instead, the Vermont troopers are following the lead of other state police organizations in proposing their own discrete bargaining unit.
"We have been considering it for a long period of time," he said.
But State Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, an Essex/Orleans County Republican, said the committee he leads heard testimony and gathered information showing there had been some tension between those bargaining units that did not face potential layoffs and those that did.
"Based on all available information, it was clear the state troopers were unwilling to give up any benefits and take no pay cuts because the governor proposed to hold them harmless," he said.
In the final weeks of the lawmaking session, when asked by the union to intercede in the negotiations with the administration, tensions between the union became clear to lawmakers, Illuzzi said.
Linda McIntire, state director of human resources, said now it is up to the Labor Relations Board to process the petition.
If the state police are separated from the VSEA, it will not make that massive a difference to negotiations with the union, she said.
"If they are successful in their decertification petition, we would be dealing, potentially, with a different entity," she said.
The petition, as submitted, does not comply in some technical details with the rules for such requests, but it is expected the troopers will file a new version or add the details to the application.
louis.porter@rutland herald.com
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