Committee walks through H.173, would grant higher-education employees right to strike

The House General & Housing Committee on March 20, 2025, heard a walkthrough of H.173, a bill that would allow employees of the Vermont State Colleges and the University of Vermont to engage in strikes by carving out an exception from existing prohibitions in the State Employee Labor Relations Act.

Sophie Zadatny of the Office of Legislative Council summarized the bill's effect: the proposed statute would remove the prohibition on strikes for those higher-education employees and would also carve out an exception so that it would not be an unfair labor practice for an employee organization to encourage those employees to strike.

Zadatny explained current processes for public-sector bargaining in Vermont: higher-education employees currently follow a multi-step impasse process—mediation, fact finding and then a last-best-offer procedure that can be decided by an arbitrator or the Vermont Labor Relations Board. She contrasted that with other statutes that already allow strikes: the Municipal Employees Relations Act allows strikes but imposes guardrails, including a restriction that a strike generally cannot occur sooner than 30 days after delivery of a fact-finder's report, and it allows courts to enjoin strikes that endanger public health, safety or welfare.

Zadatny also summarized the teachers' statute, which permits strikes but gives school boards the statutory ability to impose a contract after following required procedures; she cautioned that the teachers' framework is complex and rare in practice. Committee members asked whether the bill specifies at what point in the bargaining process a strike could occur; Zadatny said H.173 does not set a specific timing trigger and simply provides that a right to strike would exist for the named categories of higher-education employees.

Members were told the committee plans to begin hearings on H.173 next week and to call witnesses. No formal action or vote occurred during the session.

The committee heard a question about which other state employees have strike rights; staff said municipal employees and teachers have statutory strike rights, while most other state employees do not. The committee indicated it will schedule testimony to explore guardrails that might accompany a new statutory right to strike for higher-education employees.