This bill establishes salary increases for Vermont state employees across the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches for fiscal years 2027 and 2028. It fully funds collective bargaining agreements for most classified employees, providing a 5.9 percent raise in 2027 and a 4.9 percent raise in 2028 through step increases and across-the-board adjustments. The legislation also allows branch leaders to extend these raises to exempt employees not covered by collective bargaining agreements, sets specific salary amounts for top state officials, and defines how annual salary adjustments for exempt employees will be calculated based on the classified employee increases.
H.714 requires Vermont state agencies to publicly disclose any automated tools (like AI or algorithms) used for employment decisions affecting wages, hiring, promotion, or discipline. Agencies must post details about these tools on their websites, including their purpose and when they began using them. The bill explicitly protects unionized state employees by ensuring these tools cannot reduce job security, benefits, or collective bargaining rights. It also creates a study committee to examine the impact on state employees and explore extending these requirements to municipal workers, teachers, and public college staff.
This bill (S.264) amends Vermont's State Employees Labor Relations Act to allow Assistant Attorneys General (AAGs) to form unions and engage in collective bargaining with the state. Currently excluded from the definition of "State employee," AAGs would now be explicitly included under the law, granting them the right to negotiate terms like pay, benefits, and working conditions. The bill removes their prior exclusion from bargaining rights by revising the legal definition of "State employee" in Section 902 of the statute. This change directly affects AAGs employed in Vermont’s Office of the Attorney General, enabling them to collectively address workplace concerns through formal negotiations.
This bill requires Vermont's Executive Branch to negotiate remote, in-person, and hybrid work arrangements for State employees through collective bargaining. It amends the State Employees Labor Relations Act to explicitly add "terms and conditions of remote, in-person, and hybrid work standards" as a mandatory subject for bargaining. The change directly affects all permanent and limited-status State employees, ensuring their input on work location policies. The law takes effect immediately upon passage, making work arrangement decisions subject to negotiation rather than unilateral state policy.
H.580 would create a unified public employees' health plan covering current and retired State, school, municipal, and university workers in Vermont. It establishes an independent commission to design the plan and set cost-sharing between employers and employees, while removing health care from collective bargaining. The bill requires all public employee health insurance costs to be tracked in a single budget line item, mandating annual transparency reports on total costs, cost per covered person, and year-over-year trends. It also directs the Governor’s budget to present public employee health benefits and Medicaid costs together, along with detailed breakdowns of expenditures for other state health programs.
H 290 amends Vermont's State Employees Labor Relations Act to include Assistant Attorneys General as state employees eligible for collective bargaining. Currently, these employees are excluded from the definition of "State employee" under the law, but the bill would remove that exclusion. This change would allow Assistant Attorneys General to form unions and negotiate contracts with the state regarding workplace conditions, pay, and benefits. The law is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2025.
H.174 changes Vermont's grievance process for state employees by requiring union contracts to use binding arbitration as the final step instead of the Vermont Labor Relations Board. This directly affects state employees, their unions, and state agencies handling workplace disputes, shifting resolution from the Board to independent arbitrators. The bill mandates that collective bargaining agreements include binding arbitration for grievances, sets deadlines for unfair labor practice cases, and specifies that arbitrators cannot alter union contracts. It exempts only certain grievances from the University of Vermont's retired employees, which remain subject to Board review. The change aims to reduce the Board's caseload while providing a standardized final step for workplace disputes.
H 173 would amend Vermont law to grant employees at public colleges and universities (including the Vermont State Colleges and University of Vermont) the right to strike, removing their current exemption from the general prohibition on state employee strikes. The bill specifically changes Section 903 to eliminate the existing exception and updates Section 962 to clarify that encouraging strikes by these employees is not an unfair labor practice. This change applies only to public higher education employees, not all state workers, and would take effect on July 1, 2025. The bill directly affects faculty, staff, and other employees at Vermont's public higher education institutions.
This bill (S 145) would amend Vermont's State Employees Labor Relations Act to explicitly include Assistant Attorneys General as "State employees" eligible for collective bargaining. Currently excluded from this right, Assistant Attorneys General working in State's Attorneys' offices would gain the ability to organize unions and negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions with their employers. The bill achieves this by revising the definition of "State employee" in the law to remove the specific exclusion for Assistant Attorneys General. The change would take effect on July 1, 2025.
H.359 regulates when Vermont state agencies can replace permanent employees with private contractors. It requires agencies to provide 35 days' written notice to unions before seeking bids for privatization contracts, including details on wages (at least equal to comparable state positions) and services. Contracts must include wage standards, health insurance parity, performance metrics, and just-cause employment protections for contractor workers. The bill also mandates Attorney General certification that contracts align with merit system principles and requires annual audits to verify 10% cost savings and performance compliance before renewal. This directly affects state agencies, union-represented workers, and private contractors hired for state services.
