In re Vermont State Colleges Faculty Federation, AFT Local 3180
Annotate this CaseThe Vermont Labor Relations Board (Board) dismissed a petition for the election of a collective-bargaining representative filed by appellant-petitioner, Vermont State Colleges Faculty Federation (Federation). The petition sought to include part-time faculty teaching for the Vermont State Colleges (VSC) distance-learning program (DLP) in the existing part-time faculty collective bargaining unit represented by the Federation. The Federation filed an initial and amended petition, in response to which the Board issued three orders: an original and two amended orders. The order at issue here was the second amended order: the Board dismissed the petition for failing to propose an appropriate bargaining unit. On appeal, the Federation asked the Vermont Supreme Court to reverse the Board’s dismissal and order the Board to reinstate the petition and conduct an election among the proposed unit members. VSC argued the Supreme Court should affirm the Board’s original decision and order an election or, in the alternative, affirm the Board’s second amended order dismissing the petition. The Supreme Court found the Board’s factual findings demonstrated that DLP faculty and on-campus faculty had different student populations, geographic locations, faculty experiences and teaching platforms, and hiring practices, and compensation considerations. The Board found that the two groups had minimal interactions, because, due to the increase in distance learning, they were inherent competitors, and that new issues for online educators not shared by traditional faculty would arise in the near future. All of these findings supported the Board’s conclusion that there were sufficient differences in the interests between these two groups that combining them would result in an inappropriate collective-bargaining unit. Therefore, the Supreme Court affirmed the Board’s dismissal.
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