Current News

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.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Procurement Technical Assistance Center (VT PTAC) invites Vermont businesses to join them and Aysis, Inc. for a free, full-day, hands-on workshop on Wednesday, August 22, 2018, in Williston, VT to help Vermont businesses understand Wide Area Workflow (WAWF), a secure, Web-based system for electronic invoicing, payment receipt, and acceptance.

Vermont Business Magazine Allstate Agency Owners are coming together to support the Vermont Foodbank by holding a donation drive in their agencies from now until Sept. 15. Agency owners are calling on residents to support local families and youth as they begin the new school year by donating items for the Foodbank’s BackPack Program, an initiative that distributes kid-friendly, nonperishable, vitamin-fortified food to students in need.

“When I learned that one in four Vermont residents struggle with hunger, I knew that my team and I had to do something,” said Michael Coburn, Allstate agency owner in Williston. “Giving back is core to who we are, which is why we’re proud to support the Vermont Foodbank and their efforts to alleviate hunger in our communities.”

Vermont Business Magazine Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) Thursday asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to join a request for Judge Kavanaugh’s Staff Secretary records and to publicly release the documents now. Feinstein is the Judiciary Committee’s Ranking Member, and Leahy and Durbin are also senior members of the committee. The senators emphasize the fact that documents that are currently “committee confidential” contain information indicating that Kavanaugh misled the Senate during his 2006 nomination hearing.

They write, “We firmly believe that Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination cannot be considered unless these documents are available, including to the public and the Senate as a whole.”