After more than a year and a half of negotiation, faculty at the Vermont State Colleges voted to approve a fact finder’s recommendations for a new contract with the administration.
Of the 218 total full-time faculty eligible for the vote, 84% cast a ballot. And of those voters, 95% voted to approve the proposal.
The proposed contract includes a 16% cut to the teachers’ retirements, a small boost in salaries, and no change to health care premiums. Those compromises come at the suggestion of a neutral third-party fact finder, hired as part of the mediation process, after negotiations stalled out eight months into the bargaining process, which began in May 2018.
“It’s been a really grueling process,” said Lisa Cline, a history professor at Northern Vermont University — Johnson, and president of the VSC Faculty Federation. “We’ve been at it forever, it’s taken a lot of time and energy.”
She said for the faculty, the compromise feels like a fair deal. The administration agreed, though they took issue with one recommendation.
“While the VSCS is prepared to accept all but one of the Fact Finder’s recommendations, we believe strongly that all of our employees should be treated fairly and equally under their contracts,” Chancellor Jeb Spaulding said in a statement.
Spaulding said the administration plans to go to the Vermont Labor Relations Board over the fact finder’s recommendation over the amount of the employer contribution to retirement accounts, which he called “preferential treatment” compared to other full-time employees of the VSC.
The 16% reduction is a compromise, according to Cline, who said the adminstration’s initial proposal was a much smaller amount, and “put faculty at a rate lower than any other VSC employee, union or non-union.”
The decision on ratification for the administration is made by the chancellor, though a spokesperson for VSC said Spaulding has been conferring with the board chair on the matter.
If both sides come to a final agreement, the four-year contract would expire in August 2022 (the previous agreement ended in August 2018).
“The faculty are ready to take some hits in order to support the future of the institution,” Cline said. “That’s why they voted overwhelmingly in support of this very reasonable settlement.”
Last month, Spaulding published a white paper outlining the system’s stressors – from declining enrollments and chronic underfunding to competition from online-degree programs, along with a plan to try to address those challenges.
“The faculty are ready for this conflict to be over so that we can move forward together,” Cline said.
The Vermont State Colleges include Castleton University, Northern Vermont University (Lyndon and Johnson), the Community College of Vermont, and Vermont Technical College.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story referred imprecisely to the action taken by faculty. Members approved a proposed fact finder’s settlement.
Read the story on VTDigger here: State colleges faculty give OK to proposed contract.
