[L]eavitt Sayers took the day off work Tuesday to attend a contract negotiation session with the state. But the meeting didn’t happen, and Sayers, 23, said it felt like he took the day off for nothing.
“[The state has] had this information for seven days,” Sayers said in front of the Pavilion office building in Montpelier, along with about a dozen other AOT workers who planned to attend the negotiations. “They initially made it seem like they were going to meet with us and then all of a sudden – out of nowhere — they just kinda fell back on what they had said.”
Sayers was joined by about a dozen AOT workers – many wearing the electric yellow shirts they don on the job – who marched to the office to express frustration over what they characterized as a last-minute meeting cancellation by the Shumlin administration.
“It appears [the administration] is uncomfortable dealing with the direct-line workers,” Vermont State Employees’ Association Executive Director Steve Howard said Tuesday. “Otherwise, there is no reason they shouldn’t have shown up today.”
Negotiators from the VSEA and the Agency of Administration have been meeting most Tuesdays in Montpelier to hammer out next year’s contract with AOT workers, but no meeting was held this Tuesday.
Doug Gibson, the VSEA communications director, said the union decided last week to bring front-line workers to the meeting, as the new contract will affect them the most, but that the state seemed unwilling to meet with this group of people. He said the administration canceled the meeting Monday, citing a need to review salary information pertinent to the negotiations.
State officials rejected the union’s narrative, saying the meeting with front-line workers was never confirmed.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” said Justin Johnson, secretary of the Agency of Administration. “We are absolutely open to having employees in the meetings at the right time.”
Johnson said the state never confirmed a time, place or topic details with the VSEA, and that the plan for Tuesday had always been to review the numbers, which Johnson said were made available Monday afternoon.
“What I find a little odd is they would ask their members to take time off work for a meeting that wasn’t confirmed,” Johnson said. “We had not agreed to have the meeting.”
But while Johnson said no meeting was planned, a VSEA official provided VTDigger with meeting notes and email correspondence that appear to show that the state and the VSEA had confirmed a meeting for the 15th, though an exact location had not been determined.
Tom Cheney, deputy commissioner of the Department of Human Resources, said that a meeting had been confirmed for the 15th, but that it was canceled because a room capable of housing the AOT workers could not be booked.
He also said the state wanted to review the employee salary data before holding another meeting, and that the VSEA was told that the lack of a room had forced the meeting delay early Monday.
“There wasn’t anything about a room size,” in the notification email, Gibson said. “It was them deciding they wanted to do something different.”
The AOT workers who gathered in Montpelier on Tuesday had taken time off work in order to make the meeting, and said that the cancellation was an act of disrespect.
“We find it somewhat disrespectful that you guys don’t want to sit down with us,” Sayers told Deputy Administration Secretary Michael Clasen in a brief meeting in the Pavilion lobby Tuesday.
While the facts around Tuesday’s meeting cancellation are hazy, what is clear is that a rift has formed in the contract negotiations, only a few weeks into the talks.
While the state secured ground rules for negotiations on contracts with corrections and supervisory groups, negotiators could not agree on rules of engagement for nonmanagement contracts, which has made for a messier, more public struggle.
“It does not look like they are in a big hurry to get through the contract,” Johnson said. “But we are committed to working through it.”
Last week, AOT workers presented their contract demands to Sue Minter, the former secretary of the Agency of Transportation who resigned last week to run for governor.
The workers also submitted the contract demands to Clasen following their brief meeting Tuesday.
The letter, signed by 50 union garage workers across the state, expressed “an interest in guaranteeing that our jobs carry dignity, pay family supporting wages, offer good benefits, and reasonable working conditions.”
The demands included automatic annual cost of living increases, third-party arbitration to settle disputes and a guarantee that wages would increase alongside any expansion of the official snow season.
Minter said front-line workers dropped off the demands at her office in the last hour of her last day as VTrans secretary. She said she listened to their concerns, and has passed them on to Chris Cole, who replaced her.
Minter said she often visited workers on the job, and that she implemented training programs, safety improvements and increased pay during her time at the agency.
“I worked really hard to understand the incredibly hard work of the front-line workers,” Minter said. “I have done what I have been able to do to understand their needs.”
