Posts tagged Vermont
Report: The Battle for Worker Freedom: Grading State Public Sector Labor Laws
September 10, 2026 // Union executives are prioritizing recruitment. The fastest-growing category of public sector labor legislation expands collective bargaining into new workplaces. On the strength of these new laws, union executives are slowly replacing their membership losses since 2018. From 2018 to 2025, the country’s four largest government unions report a net decline in membership of 87,919, or 1.3 percent. However, they also report a collective gain of 232,502 members, or 3.5 percent since 2024. This report awards full letter-grade increases to Idaho (now A) and Louisiana (now B) due to their adoption of pro-worker labor reforms this past legislative session. However, the drops in grades—Nebraska (D), Nevada (D), and Rhode Island (F)—are the result of these states prioritizing union executives over workers and enacting laws helping unions recruit, politick, organize, and strike. Thirteen states now have an “A” or “A+” grade—up from twelve in the previous edition of this report—while six states earned an “F”—up from five over the same time period. Overall, the research finds 25 states fall below a “C.”
Alleging illegal retaliation, union wins temporary halt to closure of St. Albans dairy plant
August 19, 2026 // A federal judge granted an order to stop Dairy Farmers of America from closing the plant, which had been set to shut down on Monday. The dispute goes to court Thursday.
Healthy Living Appeals to NLRB Not to Recognize Its Labor Union
August 14, 2026 // A number of overqualified job seekers — some with no retail experience and some who had recently relocated to areas around Healthy Living stores — had taken positions with the company. The small grocery chain, which employs 300 people in its South Burlington, Williston and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., stores, was staffed so well that it didn’t have to recruit workers for the 2025 holiday season, as it had each year for the previous decade.
Opinion: Sneaky new teachers’ union plan to indoctrinate our kids: classroom AI
August 3, 2026 // Their objective is to indoctrinate, not educate. That misguided mission is largely to blame for the past decade of drastic learning loss in K-12 schools: Too much indoctrination, too little emphasis on the basics of math and reading. It’s a bad omen for our country.
NLRB dismisses Healthy Living’s bid to overturn union election
July 20, 2026 // The National Labor Relations Board has stepped in after labor leaders accused Healthy Living of meddling in union elections, dismissing the grocery chain’s appeal and clearing the way for collective bargaining.
Report: The diminishing power of teacher unions
May 29, 2026 // The result is A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026. Building on our original study, the authors set out to gauge teacher union strength in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.). Collectively, the 59 measures—which include 29 new measures that were not in the original report—seek to quantify union strength in five key areas: Resources and Membership; Involvement in Politics; Labor and Bargaining Policies; Policy Wins and Losses; and Perceived Influence, which draws from an original survey examining how stakeholders in each of the 50 states and D.C. perceive teacher union strength today. The states with the strongest teacher unions are Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii. The states with the weakest teacher unions are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi. (See our interactive table on the report website for the overall rankings alongside the rankings for each of the five areas.)
First-Ever Bargaining Compact Unites Higher Ed Unions Across Northeastern US
May 5, 2026 // Together, they drafted a document called the Amherst Compact. While it is largely aspirational, it commits HELU to working “to coordinate bargaining priorities that raise the floor for workers of all job categories across the most densely-unionized region of the U.S.,” the Northeast. Moreover, the agreement pledges solidarity across job titles, even on campuses where multiple unions represent workers in different employment categories — buildings and grounds; clerical; custodial; food service; research; security; or teaching — and regardless of whether the workers are employed by university hospitals or degree-granting bodies.
Debate grows as states consider teacher strike bans
March 9, 2026 // Many states are considering new policies affecting teachers’ ability to strike or participate in protests, and education officials and labor advocates continue to debate the legality of teacher strikes. The strikes are banned or heavily restricted in roughly 38 states and Washington, D.C.
Judge denies Vermont employees union petition to halt return-to-office mandate
December 2, 2025 // A judge denied the Vermont State Employees’ Association’s petition to get a preliminary injunction to halt Gov. Scott’s return-to-office mandate. VSEA argued the mandate is rushed, will upend the lives of employees living out of state and will cost taxpayers more. The court says the union did not show evidence of irreparable harm in their filing. This means most state employees will have to report to the office three days a week beginning Monday, Dec. 1.
Trump Just Saved Thousands of Disabled Americans’ Jobs
August 5, 2025 // Disability-rights advocates have long insisted that, as a matter of public policy, disabled people’s lives should resemble those of nondisabled people to the greatest extent possible. They have argued, for example, that “segregated” environments, which primarily or exclusively serve disabled people, violate the principle of normalization and ought to be abolished. And for decades, they have called for the repeal of Section 14(c), a provision of the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 that allows certified employers to pay disabled workers a subminimum wage commensurate with their productivity. Congress created the 14(c) program to enable people with severe disabilities to remain in the job market after the passage of the federal minimum wage. The Biden administration published a proposed rule in 2024 that would have phased out the program, claiming that it was “no longer necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities.” But last month, the Trump administration announced it was withdrawing the proposal. In doing so, it preserved the jobs of thousands of severely disabled Americans who would have lost one of the staples of a “normal” life.