 All right welcome back everybody it is Friday afternoon actually welcome it's Friday afternoon this is our first time on on uh streaming today so uh you're with the general housing military affairs committee and we are picking up some hearing on h308 which is uh which is a bill to allow for a card check uh in it's a union bill and we have a few witnesses to start start our testimony on this bill and i wanted to start with wendy canig from is it canik conic conic okay um uh from from uvm and uh let her go to um recover from from her second shot so wendy i'll pass you the microphone and um and please welcome thank you so much good to be with all of you good to see you um thanks for having me in today i think you know that normally we would have jess kraus come in and testify on a bill like this but he is not available he's uh unable to be here today so he's passed the baton to me so um i've i've got some comments and um i'll if you have questions i'll try to answer them or if i can't i'll get back to you so um for h308 um an act relating to authorizing card check elections we've got four primary areas of concern from the university perspective one that the bill eliminates the long-standing and well recognized right of employees to secret ballot election two that it eliminates the pre-election period that allows employees to engage in a full exchange of ideas and opinions and cast a well-informed ballot three that no reelection requirements for unions are certified through card check a union does not have to campaign every year to maintain status uh nor can employees decertify a union they are unhappy with through a card check process and four taking away the employee's rights to secret ballot election is dramatic change that should not be undertaken without a clear identifiable need election statistics support the current process works in vermont and that it already heavily favors the unions um couple of of comments underneath those um we think that card check can be unreliable as an indicator of union support people sign union cards for many reasons they sign because they truly want a union and understand what that means but they also can sign because that on that particular day they're upset with their supervisor or upset with the institution they sign because they think the card can only mean that an election will be held they sign to get an organizer or fellow employee off their back they sign because they don't want to be singled out in the face of representatives that other employees have already signed up they sign because they think they know what they are signing but sometimes do not and an employee who is approached one-on-one by a union organizer might sign a card for many reasons we think that that there's peer pressure that goes along with this and if the person signs a card the union knows it the union will also know who did not support a drive through card check the privacy of the ballot box does not exist in the card signing process by contrast the secret ballot makes sure that no one can be pressured be it from union organizers or managers into casting a vote one way or another in simple terms no one will ever know you vote in a secret ballot election with card checks people will know for elimination of the pre-election exchange of ideas and opinions once the VLRB provides notice of an election under the current process a full and free debate on the issues can take place so that the employees can go into the election with all of the information they need to make an informed choice employees can share their experiences talk to their colleagues they can ask the union employer questions and learn as much as they can about the pros and cons of union representation and of the lack of that this bill would largely eliminate the benefit of an election period with the full exchange of ideas and opinions this is a missed opportunity for employees to be informed and engaged before making a decision about whether they wish to be part of the union the no reelection requirements for unions a full and free election by secret ballot is particularly important because unions do not stand for reelection unlike our political representatives the union does not have to campaign each year or even every several years to maintain its status as the majority representative of employees once a union is certified it is there for a long period of time that makes the first and often the only election so important thus employees deny the secret ballot election in the first instance would not have a second chance moreover h308 does not even allow for the reverse for example it does not allow for employee to sign cards and decertify the union when a majority sign a petition to that effect in such a case the employees would still have to go through the entire election process we don't think that there is a need for this legislation the current process has worked well for vermont's employees and for that matter for unions looking for the statistics compiled by the vlrb there were 75 union elections conducted by the labor board between 2009 and 2019 unions won 63 of those 75 at an 84 success rate success rates under the nla are about 71 some may argue that this new law is necessary because of management coercion and discrimination these statistics do not support such a conclusion but even putting aside the numbers the current law already takes care of any cases of management coercion or discrimination at no time has uvm been accused of committing unfair labor practices during such elections nor has it been accused of any objectionable election conduct even if this were not the case the current law has sufficient protections for employees to guard against unlawful or convert coercive conduct by employers there is already a method by which employees can be made whole if they prove that they are the victims of coercion or discrimination that method is the filing of unfair labor practices with the vlrb the board is fully empowered to rectify any case of discrimination or coercion brought before it at uvm there have been seven union elections since 1996 five of which were successful for unions turnout for uvm elections has been robust and has followed a full and fair debate on the question of unionization in the two elections that were not successful at uvm the lack of success was due to infighting among three different unions trying to organize the same group of employees that situation actually highlights why a secret ballot election is very important the state employees labor relations act is not unique it functions like most labor acts it's designed to afford employees the right to decide whether or not they wish to be represented by a union serla is not designed to force unionization or sneak it in the back door it is not designed to make it as easy as possible for union to win it is designed for the employees set up to ensure that they can decide the kind of environment they want to work in and to make that choice privately free from pressure on either side it is hard to imagine that this is not an anti-democratic piece of legislation well this builds as much to help the labor organizations it does nothing for individual employees if this bill is supposed to be about helping unions then by all means it should be passed but if it is supposed to be about securing and enhancing employee rights and the freedom to choose it is misguided rather than help employees this bill eliminates the rights and protections that they have held for decades that concludes my comments all right thank you wendy um please take care of yourself thank you i appreciate it and if when we have questions for uvm we'll try to find a time when jess is available and just so you know i also submitted something in writing as well yeah saw that thank you thanks so much all right um next up we have um liz madina from afl cio liz welcome thank you um so thank you for having me my name is liz madina i'm the executive director of the vermont state labor council afl cio which is our state's federation of labor unions and affiliates representing over 10 000 working vermonters i know you're at least somewhat familiar with the legal details of car check the car check election process proposed in h308 so therefore i will focus on why h308 is so important to working for monitors and us workers in general i want you all to imagine for a moment that we're living in a country let's call it oligalia oligalia is a de facto one party state let's call this ruling party the national oligolists oligalia has some civil rights but there are no penalties for violations the national oligolists have party members in charge of almost every institution and workplace if an oligolian citizen expresses support for an opposition party they can be sure that a national oligolist party member will disparage and exile them opposition party members will find themselves discredited unemployed perhaps unable to find another job again the threat of marginalization and starvation keeps the national oligolists in power winning election after election which is why oligalia is a de facto one party state now i want to bring you back to our world to vermont we pride ourselves on being a free progressive and certainly modern state but as soon as we enter the workplace we are in oligalia that is how broken and dysfunctional our state and national labor laws throughout this pandemic our labor council received numerous calls from an municipal employees who wanted a union because these employees are effectively living in oligalia i must share their stories anonymously one story however stands out in particular in the middle of winter i received a call from an municipal employee on a road crew road crew one has to be a fairly strong person to handle that kind of physical labor nonetheless this strong essential worker told me they feared for their family's life because their supervisor was ordering them and their co-workers to all cram into the same work vehicle despite the severe risk of COVID exposure they and their co-workers felt powerless to say no on their own that's why they were calling me they wanted to know how they could form a union so they could be protected as well as their family and their co-workers i told them the whole unionizing process from first winning a majority signup of union cars to winning a vlrb election at which point their employer would know they were unionizing the vlrb election process puts workers at great risk and they wanted to know what those risks are i believe in always telling the truth so i shared that unfortunately employers sometimes retaliate against their employees for trying to form a union in fact the economic policy institute found that employers were charged with illegally coercing threatening or retaliating against workers for supporting a union in nearly a third of all union elections the reason why retaliation for union support is so prevalent is because there are no penalties there are no fines for violations at most an employer may be required to rehire an employee with back pay if they were unjustly fired for their union support in an at-will state they can really make up any reason compound this with the rabid anti-union anti-worker rhetoric in the media and it's no wonder that union membership is down across the country including in vermont in which only 11 of working from honors belong to a union that essential municipal employee simply couldn't take those risks especially when so many jobs have been destroyed by the pandemic they were in an impossible situation in which they're forced to choose between no collective support against covid-19 or not being able to heat their home and put food on their family's table in the end they felt they could not risk losing their ability to support their family all because our labor law is broken amazon workers in besamer alabama were put in the same impossible situation recently and the results were absolutely tragic for those of you who have not been following this drive in the national news amazon workers in besamer alabama are majority women and people of color they are given inhuman sweatshop productivity quotas for low wages they are worked so brutally that most can't even find the time to go to the bathroom during their shift workers are afraid of being fired for feeling to meet their productivity quotas that many of them regularly urinate or even defecate in bottles or bags which are regularly found throughout the warehouse these unsanitary practices were so common that they had to be addressed by managers and internal policies by the company these workers are employed by one of the richest most powerful men in the world and they're constantly surveilled and disciplined despite this they courageously teamed up with a union the rwdsu and they signed up over 3000 of their co-workers to join the union however when they finally were done with the second stage of the process the nlrb election only 738 ended up voting yes why is that if you think it's simply because workers changed their minds you have not been paying attention amazon committed unfair labor practice after unfair labor practice without consequence including hiring supervisors to constantly watch and threaten employees who supported the union threatening to relocate and installing their own ballot box to which only they had a key on their work site can you imagine if we asked voters to cast their ballots at a single party's headquarters and only that party had the key our labor law and these working conditions make a mockery of everything we have always stood for as a nation our current labor law results in a huge power imbalance between employers and employees and it plays out at every level from the local municipal to the national the fact is that if a worker signs a union card that is a pretty unequivocal vote for the union a union official does not have power to fire an employee for not signing a union card an employer does there is no need to continue following the clearly broken vrb and an rb election process in the public sector workers who don't want to join a union don't have to and yet they will still be entitled to enjoy all of the benefits the biden administration strongly supports unions and labor law reform to encourage unionization in a recent public statement in support of the pro act which compliments h308 president joe biden stated and i quote the national labor relations act didn't just say that we should hamstring unions or merely tolerate them it said that we should encourage unions encourage unions end quote president biden further stated that quote all of us deserve to enjoy america's full promise in full and our nation's leaders have a responsibility to deliver it that starts with rebuilding unions the middle class built this country and unions built the middle class unions give workers a stronger voice to increase wages improve the quality of jobs and protect job security protect against racial and all other forms of discrimination and sexual harassment and protect workers health safety and benefits in the workplace unions lift up workers both union and nonunion they are critical to strengthening our economic competitiveness end quote so my question to you today is are you ready to do your part in leading this country toward economic justice and prosperity if the answer is yes then pass h308 before the end of this session this is an incredible opportunity to lead our nation our most cherished leaders have never sat around and waited for national action to protect working people this was true when it came to the eight hour day civil unions and this was true when it came to ending child labor unfortunately we are quickly regressing to those harder more brutal times the task before us is to protect workers rights and as president biden stated encourage unions please pass card check h308 this session thank you great thank you liz um next up we have um excuse me is it tevia kelman that's excellent yes well done you must have seen fiddler on the roof at some point uh yeah i played in it in high school and you know it's a good name to carry yes i a not always an easy one to pronounce though so good it has a lot of tradition i'm sorry indeed uh no but thank you for coming in tevia can you please just let let us know um let us know who you are and and and share your thoughts on card check please absolutely um yeah so my name is tevia kelman um you can call me tev i'm a lifelong vermontter except for four years i went to college out of state um i live in the town of washington and i teach social studies and english at randolph union high school i was born in i'm a proud card carrying a member of vermont nea um i'm also the vice president of my local association i'm here um i'm grateful and very pleased to be here speaking of full throated support of h308 um a bill who i believe the passage of which is crucial to vermont's economic recovery and the pandemic and to lay in the groundwork for a more just society um i'm here today as a unionized public school teacher and also as the child of unionized public school teachers um and these two facts have helped ensure that my brothers and i grew up in the middle class during a time when that was becoming an endangered species and it's helped ensure that my own children enjoy a level of financial security and access to among other things health care that too many of the students i teach don't um in recent years particularly during the pandemic it's helped my co-workers and i bargained for basic safety protections during the COVID-19 crisis it's helped make sure we have both adequate time to plan lessons for our students and adequate time to care for our families so we don't have to choose between those things it's helped us protect staffing levels that are necessary to deliver the education that kids deserve um it's helped us win significant wage increases especially for the lowest paid workers over 90 of whom are women in our union and i'm talking about our educators the food service workers the bus drivers and the custodians who taught fed transported and cleaned for our kids during the pandemic many of whom do not make a living wage but there's tremendous imbalance between the levels of unionization the private sector where a majority of americans work and the public sector where i work and this has had some really toxic political effects because it opens the door for unionized workers to be portrayed as as the problem as hoarding wealth in a time of scarcity and we've seen this premise used repeatedly in attempts to pressure our unions to make concessions to austerity whether that's at the local state or national level um so i'm a history teacher and i think that a little bit of history historical context is really crucial to understanding why that line of thinking is at best misguided and i think more accurately like deceitful and and spurious and i think by extension opposition to the car check bill i think is is a historical makes no sense so when i teach my 11th graders about the history of the labor movement i show them this graph and i'm sorry i wasn't sure if i was going to be able to screen share so sorry for the low tech this um but you can probably see that the one at the top is uh is yellow it represents uh income inequality you know the genie coefficient and as you can see on the left side of the graph the beginning of the century it's quite high and that it trends downward toward the middle of the century and then trends back upward beginning in about the early 1970s and has continued a ever steeper climb um up until the present bomb the bottom the blue line um it's kind of the mirror image right it starts low at the origin and and then climbs up around the middle of the century right when the income inequality is at its lowest point is when the blue lines apex and then around the same time in the 1970s it begins an increasingly steep decline so that blue line of course represents union density the share of the american workforce that is in a labor union and um my 11th graders are pretty quick to notice the strong correlation between low levels of union death density and skyrocketing inequality and by the time i'm done with them they can explain why right because they've learned about the role of the Knights of Labor and the international workers of the world in laying the groundwork for the reforms of the progressive era or how the cio and the strike wave of the early 1930s pushed forward the most profound and long lasting reforms of the new deal when they understand how crucial unions were in fighting for the eight hour day women's suffrage the abolition of child labor workers compensation health and safety laws fire exits the minimum wage protections against workplace harassment and discrimination the weekend this correlation makes sense to them um and it's no less true today right research has repeatedly shown that unionization decreases racial and gender pay disparities raises prevailing wages for non-union workers stimulates economic growth because it increases the share of the population that has disposable income and leisure time so for me it's a little hard to grasp how anyone could look at our nation's history and not support a bill that makes it easier for working people to join a union to band together to protect and advance their collective interests and especially at a time where historic and toxic levels of unequal wealth distribution are connected to all of our worst social problems racial inequality political corruption environmental degradation the carnage of the COVID-19 pandemic how could one see removing barriers to union membership is anything but a positive good um a recent out poll showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans support the right to unionize but only 7.1 percent actually enjoy this right why is this a lot of my students make the connection between the long slow climb at the left side of that curve of union density and the brutal suppression of workers during the gilded age during the first and second red scares um and at other times in american history when they learn about homestead and the use of strike breakers and picker tints firing on striking steel workers when they learn that the first antitrust legislation the sherman antitrust act was used to bust up gilded age labor unions instead of the monopolies it was designed to regulate when they learn about how during the west virginia coal wars us military air power was used against striking coal miners when they understand that martin luther king was assassinated in the context of a unionization campaign among the Memphis sanitation workers they begin to grasp the extent to which the wealthy and powerful have fought to prevent workers from joining together to demand better pay better working conditions security and what we always run out of time in american history to cover in american history to cover is what's happened over the past 50 years right how that labor movement so powerful the middle of the century that had had managed to create a thriving middle class right i mean this is the time that donald trump is talking about when he wants to make america great and uh the great part was that working people a greater proportion of them than ever before because of of what had happened um had had gotten a slice of the working had gotten a slice of the american dream since then a combination of factors including macartheism deindustrialization trickle down economics a series of federal executive judicial and legislative actions that have weakened organized labor and decades of coordinated anti-union propaganda and anti worker policy prescriptions funded by corporate and right-wing interests that has brought us to the point we're at today um few of my students because we run out of time and unfortunately i think too few policies policymakers seem to grasp that the attempts to prevent workers from unionizing while they're perhaps arguably less violent than they were during the gilded age have been nonetheless ruthlessly effective and it's no accident that the past 50 years of declining union density track almost perfect perfectly uh perfectly with the period where real wages for workers flatline while productivity continues to climb and accumulation of wealth by the one percent skyrockets from what i understand critics of car check um tend to argue that the process is coercive and undemocratic and that's what i was hearing implied earlier i find that laughable and ahistorical and flat out wrong um that as as lis was was referring to um and as the case of of amazon and the failed best more unionization drive is only the latest of so many recent examples management continues to put tremendous resources into coercive tactics from retaliation to intimidation to propaganda to defeat union elections it's quite simple the longer and more onerous the process for securing union recognition the more time the bigger the window companies have to target the leaders to spread misinformation to threaten potential voters largely with the protection of federal labor law we should be extremely skeptical of arguments that invoke democracy to justify barriers to union membership for the exact reasons that we should reject the logic behind the anti-democratic new jim crow voting laws that we're seeing in the southern states car check is not a tool to pressure people into making a choice they don't want to make unions protect workers choices and car check is a tiny tool that we have to wield in an attempt to to uh correct a tremendous imbalance of power it's our slingshot when we go up against goliath because as lis was beautifully illustrating in her little parable there um what's coercive and undemocratic is the american workplace 74 percent of american workers are at-will employees and that means they are subject to the arbitrary and absolute directives of their employers and that arrangement is a recipe for all of the worst kinds of workplace abuse from exploitive contracts unsafe working conditions harassment at work because the boss has absolute leverage they can on a whim take away your paycheck and put you in financial precarity and this was driven home in an extremely painful and personal way for me recently when i read an article in vt digger um a couple weeks ago about federal investigation into a mcdonald's um in randolph perhaps some of you read this um if you haven't the article details the disgusting and dehumanizing treatment that employees suffered for years at the hands of a single supervisor and the well-founded fear of retaliation that prevented them from speaking out and it so happens that that particular mcdonald's has employed more of my current and former students than i cared it to try to count and i can only imagine how many of them um suffered under this man's grabby hands and his abusive and lecherous tongue and how many more have if if somebody hadn't you know taken their financial security at at risk um to do something to protect future workers so passing this bill would mean that those workers would have a chance to organize and protect themselves against a guy like that so in summary if you want to reduce income equality and political division if you want to fight sexual harassment discrimination racial or gender pay disparity if you want to promote democracy and prosperity you should support this bill thank you very much all right thank you tevia um next up is omar fernandez no more just um give us a little bit of bio and and and we'll take your comments yes sir first of all i want to thank everyone for allowing us to be here i appreciate the time you've given us my name is omar fernandez i am the president for the american postal workers union of vermont i'm also an executive board member of the afl cio vermont and one of the things i want to talk about here is first of all what is a union a lot of people like to think that a union is a bunch of lawyers that you hire and they'll take care of your business that's not what a union is a union is a bunch of people that come together to fight for their rights to fight for the things that they need to live a dignified life let's talk about that what is a dignified life a dignified life is one in which you can go to work take care of your family save some money and god forbid even go on vacation it's something that i haven't been able to do it's something that i just been able to do because now i work i work in a place that has a union now here's one thing that i want to say about a union we got to stop thinking that a union is separated from the people that they represent without the people the union is absolutely nothing without the people backing us backing president or whomever is representing us we're nothing so we got to stop thinking that union is some separate entity away from the people the union is exactly what the people want and here's one thing i always say always this without fail my greatest organizers at the postal service are managers i want to say that again the managers organize our membership a lot better than anything we can do why is that because they do things that just go way too far they just take it overboard they do things that are just inhumane they take away positions and then they expect people to work two and three jobs at the same time carriers in case every single one of you ever wonder why your mail is late why the lines along at the postal service it's because of this it's because back in the day when there was one carrier sending putting out your mail now there's one carrier doing two three and four routes and gets what we still do it the guys still get it done you might be a little bit later but it still gets done even though right now our postmaster general is talking about that he wants to make it even further he wants to say it takes four to five days to get your first-class mail out so we need to support our post office but let's get on over to another part i always like to say let us come together on things we can agree upon and here's one thing that we can agree upon everybody should have a job that takes care of their family one job you shouldn't have two three and four jobs everything that we have going on in this world going on the united states can be pointed to poverty if everyone was paid that dignified wage of 25 to 33 an hour is what everything's saying right now because of production and things like that people would be living that life that they want to live and and and let me say something weird that you probably won't hear a lot of unionists say i don't care if you're making a trillion dollars a second that's awesome do that it's the american dream but can a guy or a woman that's working 40 hours a week can they please can they take care of their family is that a possibility can we do that can that person work eight hours and come home and take care of their family enjoy their family can they come home and be able to save money be able to take trips be able to have leisure time is that a possibility every single one of you have power to do that with h308 every single one of you let's do that right now the wealthy have unions they don't call them unions but they call them clubs they call them associations they call them assemblies they call them this they call them that they get together and they talk about how we how we can make money what can you do to get that work they got that good that's fine i'm cool with that can the people have that too can we be able to do that to take care of our family that's all we want that's all we want we don't want to be working the rest of our lives we want to be able to have a proper pension we want to be able to take care of our family now i'm going to go back real quick so you guys can understand where i come from i was a minister down in mexico three years loved my job had to come over here to take care of my family while i was here a friend of mine one of my best friends in vermont the gentleman that i hope get his first job in vermont when he moved over here from canada hired me to deliver staples products for him thanks brother that's awesome i appreciate it little did i know what was going to happen i was working anywhere from 18 to 19 hours a day no joke with delivering products all the way from bridge water vermont all the way to the other side in ruttland down of four i believe it was seven to bennington and back across over to braddleboro hardest job i've ever had in my life and my best friend i would say to him hey brother i'm i'm looking at 50 tables right now that i need to get delivered to this one address that the gentleman who drives that route says is all the way on the third floor and has no elevator now this gentleman was a 65 year old man who had no choice but to work because he didn't have a pension it was taken away from him so i told my brother i told that to my best friend it was like oh he can handle it there's no big deal he can do that my own particular situation and while i was doing all this delivering all that i went to go deliver some bread over in the supermarket i'm knocking banging on the door in 20 below weather hearing people laughing on the other end of the of the door i'm frustrated as all get out as you can imagine especially after not getting enough sleep the day before i go in i say hey you know what i don't have to use the back door let me go in through the front i go in through the front deliver my bread all of a sudden the manager out of nowhere comes yelling at me hey you can't you anyways what ended up happening is that i ended up getting suspended i ended up getting all my hours taken away and trust me these hours weren't very well paid as a matter of fact my best friend had to give me a raise so that i can even afford to live where i was living because he wasn't even paying enough so i say all this to say that i was in a situation where i couldn't get it get out i had just gotten back from mexico i had to take this job and i had no choice but i was caught in a situation where i had no representation where i thought my best friend was going to be able to take care of me he was the owner of the company and he did not i ended up getting fired and that and that's only because i went over to massachusetts to take my postal exam i was caught up in the snowpocalypse that they had there where they shut all the roads down couldn't travel for a week and i got fired because they said i did a no show no call my best friend did that now imagine how it would be with other managers people that don't even know you don't even care about you all they see is the bottom line so when i started working for the postal service and they gave me a chance to represent people and become a steward i jumped on it because here it is finally where i can talk where i can represent my sisters and brothers to make sure that their rights are always being upheld and i'll tell you this we've got to come together to take care of us i need each one of you representatives to pass this h308 to take care of the families of ramon and a lot of people like to say well get education in order for you to get a higher paying job okay that's good but what if you're a person that's not good with math or programming or whatever what if you're a person that likes to sweep what if you're a person that likes to take take clean what's wrong with doing the job that you like and still be able to take care of your family what is wrong with that we need people to clean clean offices we need people to to drive those buses we need people to work in those uh in that cafeteria we need people in those jobs and why is it that when they work those jobs they can't take care of their family why can't they be able to have that dignified life for the first time in my little 51 years i've been working for the pope's office for six years i can finally take a vacation do you know why i can finally take a vacation because the union gave that to me and because my mentality i had to change my mentality from working all these years in these jobs where there was no way i could even afford going anywhere so i thank god for my union where i can finally this year i'm going to be able to take a vacation so that's going to be all my comments but ladies and gentlemen sisters and brothers we're all human beings every single one of us want to take care of our family every single one of us help those of us that don't have these good paying jobs get a union so that they can these companies aren't making enough money to do it and i tell you when we do union negotiation we we request for information how much the company makes because we don't want the company to go away we just want to be able for our labor to take care of our family thank you so much i appreciate the time you've given us thank you Omar um so Liz if we can take us half a step back here and if you can um from from your perspective walk us through a card check situation um where when we when we did a walk through on this we had a conversation ranging from oh well what if this shop had only three people in it versus um a place that had you know 100 people in it um and also understanding it giving us the context of um the fact that most of your union members are private sector but this is we can only change the law for public sector here we can't do the national um the national move but we but you're asking this bill is asking us to contemplate changing this on the in the public sector union so can you just take us through the way that you would envision um i don't know if you want to you know fictionalize any place or or um creative but just if you could create as a situation about what how how it works um from your organization's level and how you even have to start to become the union of choice for people thank you yeah um i want to give a personal shout out to damien lennard um who did an excellent walkthrough of how union elections work um several weeks ago um and i'm going to simplify that just to make it uh the illustration clearer and um you know i also want to just add that in the cases of the municipal employees um who called wanting to unionize um what's not captured in statistics are all the workers who never petition the vlrb or the nrb because they're afraid um because of the prevalence of retaliation so um i just want everyone to consider that um so say um this town of with municipal employees um say there's 10 um a road crew um just making up things um say a few individuals will reach out um either to the mont state labor council or to um a local union such as um asmy or aft uh we would have a conversation about them get to know their workplace and um give them an idea of like you know samples of contracts for their some their industry um address their issues and also consider that and just really do some education about what the union is and and as omar so clearly stated um the union is the workers it is them we only play an advisory role um we and we just give them the tools um and they they really take it from there and then it's really up to the those workers to then have conversations with their co-workers so we wouldn't necessarily go in and be like oh you know sign these union cards and you know we really want you to um it would be their co-workers talk into their co other co-workers and we they would have an organized what we would call an organizing conversation with their co-workers and that's really just a conversation about listening and empathy it's it's saying hey you know i've been having x issue at this workplace um you know i'm aware afraid for covid and going in the same vehicle and um you know i i'm i don't want um any of us to individually be fired for or a discipline for speaking up so i thought maybe you know we should do something like what are your issues and like how are things going for you and they would be doing a lot of listening and you know if those workers feel that the union um unionizing coming together as a collective as a collective power is in their interest to address their issue then they would go about the business of signing the union cards and so what a union card is is um it's a form that basically states um i would like to be um represented by um x union um and uh you know we want to be part of the this union and um have their guidance and support and helping us address our workplace issues um and so any organizer will say knows that if you want to actually be successful with a vlrb election even um that while you can petition to have a vlrb election um with only 30 percent of your workers signed union cards you won't be successful unless you get actually way above that two-thirds is what we aim for because that's how intense the um retaliation and propaganda captive audience meetings are for workers when they're trying to organize in their workplace um so we know a lot of workers will unfortunately be made afraid by their employers so we always always try to sign up at least a majority and much beyond that um and so those co-workers will um talk to each other get them to sign up the cards um send them back to us and at that point um once we did have the over majority we would petition for a vlrb election what this um legislation does essentially is take is remove the fear the real fear that workers have that they will be retaliated against and potentially lose their job um if they go through with the vlrb election process at which point their their employers will have a lot of time to work on them and um take coercive action so this this this legislation just takes up out that um really dangerous extra step the vlrb election and says hey you know for majority of workers if uh you know seven or even five at this 10 person workplace sign union cards that is a pretty unequivocal vote for the union again the union doesn't isn't some other external entity it's the workers and us as union officers and staff we don't have any power over the workers we can't fire them or anything we're just you know guiding um supporters um so you know there's no real power we have to make them sign a card um and so that that would just be like hey they've already signed up that's a vote let's give them the certification um and you know if the workers um in the public sector especially you know if there's like the three or five workers who don't want to join the union because of the supreme court to decision janice um they don't have to they don't have to join the union they don't have to pay dues they can enjoy all the benefits of the union including representation and support and collective support when they need it and want it but they don't have to contribute anything there's no obligation from them so you know there's really no coercive action or or coercion for the minority of workers who don't necessarily want to belong to the union um there's it's quite democratic and quite free um and uh you know last i will say you know in terms of de-certification um there is a process for that and it and it frankly you know should be harder because um if the majority of your co-workers um decide to want they want a union and want and want that collective support um it shouldn't be a minority of workers um you know being able to just uh coerce and have a campaign to remove them um so that's i hope a satisfactory walkthrough so you get you get the 51 percent of the votes or the the the employees to sign a card um so that ostensibly cuts out the election process the weeks and the weeks or months that it could take to have an election uh does does the employer have to have to can they disagree like can they not recognize you uh after being verified and certified by the vlrb yeah um i i don't believe that's uh the case i don't think legally they would have to recognize the union and negotiate you know and create a good faith negotiation out of that yes and current law says to the de-certification issue um there's like a 12 month like right now in public sector i believe there's like a 12 month try i'm going to call it a tryout period i'm sure that's not the right phrase but isn't there a period of time that the that the union is in place and then it can be then if the if the if the if the members of that union were unhappy with the way that they were working with that particular union they could then vote to de-certify um previous testimony said that that's not the case and and i'm and i'm just not clear on that and maybe maybe it'll be a question for legal counsel um on on how that works but um did i hear that right from from the previous witness um well i i i'll defer to damien to have the last word on this but from what i understand of the legislation um you know that uh once once the union is certified um they you can't de-certify um within the first 12 months obviously that would hamper any ability to try to negotiate a first contract if that were the case um there needs to be some kind of stabilization within at least the first year um and then afterward um through a um vlrb election process which is not a car check election uh if the workers were majority of workers were dissatisfied they could have a vlrb election to de-certify the union right and there's set percentages that would just like just like it takes 30 percent to have an election it would still have there's some number there that says so many people have to say i want to have a de-certification election yes i'm not yeah sorry go ahead damien i was just going to say it's it's the same number have to submit a petition to the vlrb and then the vlrb holds an election where essentially as the question is uh should this bargaining unit no longer be represented um and um tim noonan is probably a great resource to walk the committee through how often that occurs and so forth but there is that sort of protection for the initial period because uh what you don't necessarily want to have is a situation where for example maybe there are two competing unions or negotiations take a long time and there's a another union drive occurring while the the first contract is being negotiated because that provides um basically provides an unsettled environment for both labor and the employer because the employer doesn't know who they're supposed to be negotiating with and labor doesn't have a chance to see how the first union's performing because often it takes time to negotiate a contract and there might be sticking points um as we've seen with you know state employee contracts that have taken a year to negotiate and that sort of thing so um but let me let list keep talking here i don't want to cut into your time no that's you that's you said it beautifully thank you damien we have some questions lined up representative murphy then parson's thank you chair stevens i'm one of the newer members to the committee so i have some questions that probably other people already know answers to but i am curious when you spoke of um the once the vlrb is certified the the union it um it it's in place that that the the employer has to recognize that the question was does the does the employer have to recognize the union and and it was that once it's been recognized it does so my question is what's the process for the vlrb to recognize the union after the card check i i guess i understand if there's a vote but after the card check i'm just curious what that process is um again i'll i'll defer to damien but i believe um the cards have to be verified by a third party to ensure that all the employees are eligible to be in what we would call the bargaining unit um the bargaining unit consists of non-supervisory and non-confidential employees um and the vlrb would be um involved in helping to determine that as well um if a third party isn't available to verify um those cards uh the vlrb would do that i believe yeah so it's it actually depends um on which labor relations act we're talking about so the process for um uh teachers and school administrators is the impartial third party that the parties agree on and if they can't agree on the impart on an impartial third party it goes to the labor board for the state employees and municipal employees um it would go just straight to the labor board and that either third party or the board basically reviews the petition to give you an impartial determination of whether uh there are enough enough signatures um and their valid signatures etc to certify the union um and it's basically with the board it's part of the petition process so you submit the petition and the board is going to determine uh do you have more than 30 percent which is the threshold for an election and then beyond that do you have more than 50 percent which would be the threshold for card check certification if you don't have more than 50 percent then the but you do have more than 30 the board would send it to an election but if you do have more than 50 percent they would certify the union uh for that bargaining unit and the board also makes the determination of the appropriate bargaining unit so for example if there is a question about um i think this was in the news i think today or yesterday uh there's a bargaining unit at uvm right now that's working on organizing and there's dispute about uh between the union organizers and the university about whether certain employees are confidential employees or not that's something that the board resolves so for example uh the board might say you know these 10 employees are actually confidential employees which means they have too much exposure to um confidential employer information regarding the employee employer relationship so they can't be part of the union because they would have a conflict of interest um and so it would take them out and then count the remaining signatures on the petition um versus the remaining number of people in the bargaining unit thank you and and damien did use language that helps me understand it with speaking of it as petition because i keep thinking about cards do you put your card in the box or you know so so certainly petitions any of us that got elected to an office get you got to get a certain number of names on it and your petitions check to see if those people are valid voters so thank you that does make it very comprehensible yeah card card check is a very old-fashioned term from uh the early days of collective bargaining in this country so it just happens to have stuck around and damien just to be clear on the determination of the bargaining unit so in a group in in in any particular group that's seeking to do it perhaps through card check i mean they have to go to the vlrb to get a determination of what the bargaining i mean there might be 50 people who are interested in joining a union and vlrb could turn around and say whoa only 30 of you fit in this particular bargaining unit and then it's it could be broken down otherwise so they in order to in order to get to the point of even collecting signatures people have to ask where where would we go yeah so it is something that the employer and the employees can can agree on so it could be the sort of thing that and i'll just make up a hypothetical situation here but you could be saying that you know it's it's all snowplow drivers are going to form a union and the employer says yeah that makes sense um that bargaining unit makes sense to us so and i'm just pulling that out because there was a snowplow driver in an earlier example so it's the first thing that popped into my head um but you know so it whatever it is whether it's administrative workers um law enforcement workers and so forth um the parties could agree that yes this is the appropriate bargaining unit uh on the other hand what could happen is that the union might say uh we think it should be snowplow drivers garage workers and city hall administrative staff and the municipality might say well we think the snowplow drivers and the garage workers have one set of interests but the administrative staff have a different set and we think they should be in two different unions uh and then it would be up to the labor board to determine by looking at things like commonality of interests and over fragmentation which is when you get too many unions representing tiny fragments of the workplace um and you kind of lose the benefits uh in terms of efficiency and in negotiating the bargaining agreements um and and other factors that it considers i can't remember all of them off the top of my head but the at that point the board would kind of make the determination and there are times where um sometimes it's just one or two employees that are in uh where there's a conflict and sometimes it's multiple groups and slowly the parties will you know maybe negotiate and agree on a couple of them and the rest the board will decide but it's it's usually a process and it's almost always unique to the particular workplace that is having that discussion especially if it's not a monolithic workplace where it's just one type of worker um but you have multiple different types of job descriptions that might be uh looking at potentially unionizing representative Parsons the trial thank you um i just had a question for Liz um one thing that i've noticed i'm a new member and one of the things i've noticed that happens a lot uh so i'm going to start trying to break this down here as we use we can only legislate for Vermont however a lot of the times when uh statistics are used most always national i'm finding out is that's what gets used um earlier you had said that a third of groups that try to organize there's a retaliation against i was curious if that was a Vermont statistic or if that's a national statistic that's a national statistic i don't have statistics for Vermont um it's really hard to get those statistics in the first place but um as i told you through the story and and others um you know it's not there's nothing special about the public sector that makes them immune uh those workers immune to retaliation um you know it could be a softer glove but the the effect is the the same at the end of the day there's there is an empowering balance i think there are laws in place right for retaliation Vermont am i correct as i stated um in my testimony um there are unfair labor practices but they have no teeth there's no fee uh or penalty so um you know if somebody is retaliated against um you know and if we're able to prove it was a result of their union support which is very hard in an at-will state um then maybe we you know months and months later after this person's life has been totally upended um get them to you know be rehired at a workplace in which their their supervisors hostile toward them you know who really wants that anyway and um you know maybe with back pay but there's no penalty that's not a penalty that's just restoring okay that's a good place to look um another one that actually popped in my head is representative Murphy was talking because i don't have any x personal experience or really family experience with this subject so um one thing that did kind of jump out to me was uh the election process for us um and one thing that uh somebody spoke earlier mentioned um what is on this car is it i don't know if it's like a postcard i don't know how it works what what what it actually is on the card because i know for me i got moving truth jeez multiple signatures from people who said there's no way i'm voting for it but everyone deserves a shot here you go and they were they were a signature on my paperwork so i'm just curious what actually is on the card to make them know that by signing this this is involved because it really seems like what we're doing here is saying there shouldn't be a vote so i'm just curious what's on the card that makes it obvious that this is taking place of that vote it's very obvious i can share my union card with you if you're curious um it's not like a petition with a long list where you kind of see maybe a line at the top it's a it is i it has a whole paragraph with the union logo all over it usually and says i you know agree to join or have rep you know this union represent me um and deduct dues dues deduction would happen after they negotiated their first contract by the way not right away so it's it's pretty it's not uh you know oh yeah i i maybe you know support this like someone you know have a clickboard at the you know uh farmers market or something and you know if anyone else wants to talk about their union cards and what they look like i i welcome that from tevin oh more as well yeah i'm really appreciate if we get those sent to ron so that all of us could have a look at those you could be helpful thank you would be okay if i just threw in a quick additional thought to what i was saying yes um i mean i think just also to to the i you had brought up representative parson's like the comparison to the process that you all went through and i think that you could probably appreciate um how little incentive there is to deceive potential voters or you know particularly like you all represent small towns right the workplace we represent are even smaller right and so the idea that we would like misrepresent like we have to work with these people every day so so i think like while technically perhaps there is there is an opportunity to have some yeah i mean sure people could always pressure each other in subtle ways but like there's no there's no reason to and we reflect so badly not just on me but on the entire union in a way that i would think anybody who runs for public office could appreciate so um omar did you want to chime in on that issue yes sir i i just wanted to say that the whole reason that a union even exists in a workplace is because there's something going on in that workplace um like for instance a union couldn't go and i hear a lot of good things about this company um hypertherm in new hampshire a union couldn't just go into hypertherm and say hey by by the way i want to organize all you guys they're going to look at them and be like what are you talking about we're good over here everything's fine so i just want to remind everyone that the whole reason that unions even exists is because there's a problem in the workplace and it just does no one no good to try to deceive in any way form or fashion it's just i mean the only word i can say to that whole thing is just yuck i mean for me to go to my sisters and brothers and try to get them to do something that they don't want to do is just awful and then here's another thing that i want to remind everyone about is that if your union is not representing you correctly the people power is gone it like let's just say you want to go ahead and start doing an action somewhere or something like that and you try to work people up to do something the people are going to remember what you did in the past and that you didn't represent them correctly so your union power goes away so that's the thing that i want to let you guys know that first of all there's a there's a problem in the workplace that's your reason the union exists and then the union has to keep doing its job we the people have to keep doing our job in order for us to be of use to the workers to us so i just want to make sure that everyone knows about that the only reason and i tell managers this all the time you want to get rid of the union take care of your employees you'll never hear from us ever it's as simple as that thank you representative trana thank you chair steven so i've never been a member of a union and in some ways i guess i'm fortunate to have been able to make my way the last 45 years of my work career and make a good living for my family without having to been in a position to have to have wanted to join or been able to join a union i worked mostly administratively um so it wasn't an issue for me but um my father and brother i won't go into the story completely again my father and his brother taught at the same school and i and in the 1950s they were paid very very little and so uh you know when they they were very strong union members and it did have an impact on our family that's what i grew up with not that i'd been a member of a union but that i grew up experiencing this in my family and uh you know i listened to wendy and i know wendy and you know i have a good deal of respect for her but what i heard from her presentation was a whole lot of speculation and not a whole lot of facts and it was disappointing to me and maybe we'll get some more information from whoever we hear from again but you know to suggest that unions intimidate and coerce people into joining them you know i can't buy it there was absolutely no uh information to back that uh that proposition up so i kind of i was kind of left flat by that and uh you know workers are a little bit more savvy than they were 50 years ago or 60 or 70 or 80 years ago um you know when when they feel that they're not being well cared for by their employers they don't have time to take a bathroom break they don't get enough time to eat their lunch they can't raise their families and buy a home those are the folks that understand that something is not right in the workplace that something needs to happen in order to promote better working conditions better living conditions for those individuals i believe people are willing to work and work hard for the most part but you know when when they don't feel adequately cared for by their employer and that productivity doesn't exist anymore so you know it really benefits everyone for this and we just experienced in this country the wealthiest man in the entire country block a labor union in his facility and i believe it was alabama and i have it have a union a bargaining unit voted down by people who many of them walk off the job subsequent to that because we were here we're hearing that they don't have adequate bathroom breaks they don't have uh adequate time to eat their lunch and they're not well cared for by the richest man in this country that is bizarre that is absurd that should not be happening to american workers not at this point in time so that's just a few comments i you know my observations and i hope we can hear back from uvm with a little bit more substance to what they're trying to tell us and i remember last year when they came in and spoke this exact same piece last year when they when i was here and they came in to debate this bill or to try and cut this bill down i just don't buy it you know the nurses had to go and strike and uvm medical center in order to get decent wages and conditions to work and you know we're not in sweatshops anymore and jimmy hafa has gone under the end zone of the of the giant stadium in new jersey so you know we're just at a different date and time and i believe that unions are necessary or instrumental in protecting our american workers and our vermont workers from the most point representative murphy than waltz thank you chair stevens i don't know how relevant this is to the card check conversation but i do want to um say that that elmar i'm a retiree of the united states postal service i i i worked there almost 15 years and uh it it certainly did give me many opportunities and i know much of the circumstances that benefited me were because of a very strong union but i never joined and i just had my own reasons for not feeling that was what i desired to do and i do have to refute the the conversation that unions don't pressure because i got some pretty ugly letters and and i appreciate that that's you know the voice of of a group that is trying to say we need your help or we're working for all you need to be part of all you're one of us but it they weren't written in a very nice way at times um and and it wasn't a lot but but there were points where i did receive communications mails that that um as i said were pressure so you know i i think that we're all human and there's humans on both sides of any of these contracts and negotiations so we want to make sure we don't suggest that only one side can twist a few arms thank you all right representative was thank you i finally found the mute button uh i want to add a different perspective i grew up in a union family and i was a union member myself my dad was a sheet metal worker and back in the fifties i remember his going on strike for five cent an hour increase just imagine of course today there would be absolutely nothing but five cents an hour back in the fifties meant something and the strike lasted several months and we the family existed because we had help from the union and and they finally did get their five cents an hour uh so i i've got a couple of things i want to say about that from that experience i think it's extremely important that uh workers be able to organize uh like represent of triano i find it incomprehensible and i should also add that i've also lived elsewhere i lived in germany uh where the social services and everything are very different and where this sort of issue would not have come up because people were pretty well taken care of but here in the united states where we seem not to want to take care of people we don't want to give them decent healthcare we don't want to give them decent pensions and so on that makes this issue far more important it i'm also reminded that a couple of years ago i presented the the bill on uh creating better working conditions for pregnant employees and it's incomprehensible to me why the legislature should even have to go there why should we have to legislate that a pregnant employee might need more frequent bathroom breaks or might need a stool to sit on if she's working at a cash register you know why why can't that just be worked out why can't people be reasonable and so that's all the more reason why we need people to be able to organize and to be able to say look this is just wrong and it's not just about pay that's not everything and that's not the whole business of unions of course it's important pay and benefits but it's also the working conditions as an example for the pregnant employees so i'm i'm definitely in favor on whatever we can do to make the process cleaner and less coercive and i certainly support this legislation thank you uh Liz Medina then then Representative Hango thank you um i just want to say Representative Barbara Murphy i'm sorry you had that negative experience at the same time i do think it's really important to differentiate between peer pressure and actual coercion there's a difference between somebody who has equal power in your workplace your co-worker to you know saying something that may not be so nice um then difference between a supervisor who can take your ability to provide for yourself to house yourself to feed yourself to go to the doctor away from you that's power that's the power and difference that's coercion there's a real difference peer pressure is not the same as coercion thank you Representative Hango thank you um like Representative Walts I grew up in a union household um and I was also a union member about 40 years ago um I feel that this is a subject that we're getting very very emotional about most of what we deal within this committee are emotional issues and I feel like our emotions are getting in the way this is not about us versus them this is about whether we can write good legislation that helps our workers or not and I truly believe in the legislative process I believe that we can write laws so that workers have the right to work safely and I feel that we need to remove the emotion out of this conversation at least for today it's been a long week um I could tell stories that would make you cry about something that happened with my family that a union should have supported us and at the time the union was powerless but really um I'm not going to go there because I'm really not that interested in sharing personal stories this is about the whole state of Vermont this is not just about certain workers in my opinion so thank you for listening and I hope that um we can thank our witnesses for their powerful testimony and maybe move on to the rest of our business for today thank you um and just to be clear this affects you know the places the public sector unions so it's not quite everybody um but it is people who work in um in the areas in the in the unions that are on the statutes for us um which could be municipal workers that could be state workers could be um there's very there's very few pockets of places that are still non-unionized in the public sector but there are some and we're seeing that played out in the in the article that Damien mentioned earlier um it's 225 I want to um I've got to go I I would like to thank Liz Medina Omar Fernandez and and Tevia Kalman for coming in today and testifying and Wendy Koenig earlier um we'll be taking more testimony and this is time allows in the in the coming in the coming weeks um but thank you for this this is um a good indication of of what the issues are and what the goals are of the legislation and and and where we are with it right now so thank you all so much um Tevia who are you sharing there I can't I can't leave without saying hello to the baby this is Ozzie she just woke up from an app it's waving the spoon there you go all right everybody let's take a break and I will see you on Tuesday um and Chip do you have Chip do you have this under control or are you still I can't hear you I'm still here all right are you there how's your power situation you're going to be able to run the meeting yeah it hasn't flashed off in a while yet so all right thanks everybody thank you so come back at two two thirty five or whatever