Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Norwich University begins the 2018-2019 academic year on Monday, August 27, with approximately 800 new students comprising the Class of 2022. These new students bring the total number of students enrolled in campus-based programs to about 2,400 students, which is the full capacity of the residential campus, the Northfield college announced Monday.

Vermont Business Magazine Green Mountain Power is offering Tesla Powerwall 2.0 batteries to 100 eligible customers, free of charge. A $150,000 grant from the Vermont Low Income Trust for Electricity (VLITE) will pay for the cutting-edge technology and installation in the homes of low income customers with significant need for backup power reliability due to health and mobility issues. GMP is reaching out to customers who qualify.

Tesla Powerwall batteries provide backup power like a standard generator, but Powerwalls turn on seamlessly and are cleaner. They can be charged from power off the grid, or with a customer’s own home solar array and offer eight to twelve hours of energy.

Public Assets Institute Vermont lost 2,200 jobs in July, although it still had 5,000 more jobs than before the recession. The average number of nonfarm payroll jobs in 2017 was 1.8 percent higher than in 2007, the previous peak, and only 4 percent higher than the peak before the 2001 recession. Vermont’s pace of recovery has been slower than the nation’s as a whole since the start of the century and slower than recoveries in the 1980s and 1990s.

Vermont Business Magazine After a five-month contract bargaining process, the Vermont State College Faculty Federation (the union representing faculty at the Vermont State Colleges) and the administration of the VSC System have reached impasse in our negotiations.

According to the union, the administration proposed numerous cuts to the existing faculty contract, including an effective pay cut over the life of the contract as well as reductions to benefits. The administration also made a number of proposals aimed at substantially altering work expectations and increasing workload, weakening the job security of VSC faculty, and requiring faculty to teach on campuses hours away from the campus on which they were hired to teach.

Vermont Business Magazine Global plastic and silicone injection molder and contract manufacturer GW Plastics, based in Bethel, has won the 2018 Vermont Business Growth Award and two workforce development training grants worth over $80,000.

Vermont Business Magazine The UVM Medical Center released the terms of its latest contract proposal to the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals Saturday night. The two sides met Saturday and exchanged informal proposals. No deal was reached. During negotiations, according to a hospital statement, the hospital presented a new formal wage proposal outlined below.

Vermont Business Magazine Except for texting and driving, today's college students are engaging in fewer risky behaviors. Fuse, the independent teen and young adult marketing agency based in Burlington, is often asked about trends that brands might capitalize on to reach this specific demographic. Our agency believes that Gen Z’s behaviors are more important than trends, because they are stable, often lasting for a decade or more. A brand can build a strategy around long-term behaviors, where doing so around a trend is precarious. And we are fortunate to be living at a time when Gen Z behavior is actually more fascinating than any short-term trend.

Vermont Business Magazine Nurses go on strike; Feds terminate EB-5 Center; tax revenues flew over targets; jobless rate held steady; and the Vermont Climate Action Report revealed discouraging news about the rise of greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont, which will make achieving ambitious goals even more challenging and perhaps unlikely.

Vermont Business Magazine The UVM Medical Center and Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals have agreed to meet on Saturday afternoon to continue bargaining to reach a new contract, the hospital announced Friday.

Vermont Business Magazine UVM Health Network Porter Medical Center Board Chair Maureen McLaughlin announced today that Porter’s President, Dr Fred Kniffin, will step down from his leadership role of the Middlebury hospital next spring. The search for a new leader of Porter will begin shortly, the hospital said in a statement. Kniffin was named interim president in June 2016 and elevated to CEO later that year. In 2017, Porter joined UVMHN.

Vermont Business Magazine Extremely low weekly unemployment claims fell again last week. For the week of August 11, 2018, there were 263 claims, 56 fewer than than they were the previous week, and 103 fewer than they were a year ago. Altogether 3,404 new and continuing claims were filed, a decrease of 98 from a week ago, and 391 fewer than a year ago. For most weeks of 2017 and 2018 claims have been below the year before. Vermont is currently in a historically low period of unemployment.

by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine Vermont lost workers in July and the labor force was also down for the first time in several months. The number of unemployed was up slightly, indicating that all three broad indicators were negative. Nonfarm employment, both adjusted and not adjusted for July, is below the level of 2017 and 2016. Still, the unemployment rate for July 2018 held at 2.8 percent, where it's been for several months. The Labor Force is the denominator in these equations, so if it's down, it can make the rate look relatively better than the actual employment numbers might suggest. The Vermont Department of Labor released the data today.