The Vermont Labor Relations Board has rejected an attempt by 63 state employees to get double time pay for their work in the weeks following Tropical Storm Irene.
The board turned aside the union’s main legal argument. And the board also said it would have been better if the employees union and the Shumlin Administration had resolved the matter informally, without a legal case being filed.
Irene’s flood waters on Aug. 28, 2011 ripped through the state office complex in Waterbury, displacing more than 1,500 employees. Workers were re-assigned or told to work at home while the state scrambled to find new office space.
But 63 employees invoked language in their contract that they said entitled them to double pay if they worked while their usual offices were closed due to an emergency.
The contract language about double-time pay worried top state officials in the days following the storm. Personnel Commissioner Kate Duffy testified at a labor board hearing in April about an email she sent to top state officials warning about the financial implications if employees were ordered to work during an emergency closing and the state had to pay double wages.
“This was a significant potential financial burden, and so I was going to be as careful as I could be,” Duffy said.
Abigail Winters, a lawyer for the state employees association, pressed Duffy about her warning.
“In fact didn’t you know there was a potential possibility that this would have an impact on budgets?” Winters asked.
Duffy replied: “If the litigation went a certain way, or if I could not reach an agreement.”
The two sides could not reach an agreement, so it went to the labor board. And the board in its ruling accepted the state’s argument that state offices were closed for only one day for the Irene emergency. The board said it was unfortunate that the issue led to protracted litigation because it overshadowed the valiant work the state employees did after the storm.
Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding said he’s pleased the board sided with the state. He said the litigation did not poison the relationship between the administration and the union.
“It was after this double pay issue controversy arose that the state and the
But Winters of the state employees association was disappointed in the ruling. She said she’s especially troubled by the labor board’s interpretation of the contract language concerning when state offices are considered closed due to an emergency.
“What the labor board’s decision did was to interpret the meaning of the term ‘state office or facility’ to mean an agency of department. It’s not an office or facility; it’s not a building, according to the state. It’s just the operations of a department or agency of state government,” she said. “So we’re really troubled by that contortion of the language that the labor board chose to inject into the contract.”
Winters said the union is strongly considering an appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court.