The Vermont State Employees Association isn’t exactly the International Workers of the World. It generally tries to avoid rocking the boat, and comes in for a fair bit of criticism from more progressive elements of the labor movement in Vermont.

Which made it all the more remarkable when two top VSEA officials went before the House Human Services Committee last Thursday to deliver harsh accusations against the Department of Children and Families’ Economic Services Division in general and its top official, Deputy Commissioner Miranda Gray, in particular. Gray, they said, has created “an authoritarian, top-down environment in which fear is used as a weapon,” leaving employees “demoralized and fearful.”

VSEA President Aimee Bertrand (pictured above), a longtime ESD employee, told her own tale of harassment, retaliation, and punitive actions that led her and the union to file an unfair labor practice charge with the Vermont Labor Relations Board. That filing, she said, led to further retaliatory actions. All of which would appear to violate terms of the union’s contract and/or state law.

It was a stunning event. I’ve been in and around the Statehouse for over a decade, and rarely have I seen such dramatic testimony. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such serious accusations made by VSEA against a unit of state government.

You may not have noticed any of this, because the media coverage was pitifully inadequate.

To the best of my knowledge, the hearing went uncovered except for an article by VTDigger’s Peter D’Auria. But his report minimized the scope of the accusations, omitting far more than he included. I read his story after it was posted and thought, well, that’s interesting and a little bit disturbing, but kind of par for the sharp-elbow environment of union-management relations. Over the weekend, a reader contacted me and urged me to watch the hearing for myself. Am I ever glad I did.

Nothing against D’Auria. His latest story is a damn fine piece of reporting on the prosecutorial and law enforcement missteps that doomed the trial of Seth Brunell for the murder of Fern Feather. It was truly exceptional, it held authorities to account, and I urge you to read it if you haven’t already. But he fumbled the VSEA hearing.

His account headlined Bertrand’s accusation that she was secretly surveilled during an all-staff ESD meeting last fall. He fails to mention that, according to Bertrand, the meeting was not supposed to be recorded by anyone. Further down in the story, he gets to Bertrand’s broader charges of systematic harassment by officials from ESD and its parent organization, the Department for Children and Families, over a period of several months.

But he does not report, at all, the testimony by VSEA Executive Director Steve Howard, who said his members “got a lot of heat for daring to speak with legislators.” Such meetings, he said, fall under the definition of “concerted activity” as defined by the National Labor Relations Board:

You have the right to act with co-workers to address work-related issues in many ways. Examples include: talking with one or more co-workers about your wages and benefits or other working conditions, circulating a petition asking for better hours, participating in a concerted refusal to work in unsafe conditions, openly talking about your pay and benefits, and joining with co-workers to talk directly to your employer, to a government agency, or to the media about problems in your workplace. Your employer cannot discharge, discipline, or threaten you for, or coercively question you about, this “protected concerted” activity.

(Bold font is mine, not NLRB’s.) Why D’Auria and/or his editors chose to frame the story in a way that minimized its importance is beyond me. Stuff happens in the journalistic process, and nobody bats 1.000. Problem is, in our sadly diminished news ecosystem, we no longer have multiple outlets to provide different angles on big stories. It used to be that several outlets competed with each other for the biggest scoops and juiciest bits. If one outlet fell short, there were others to fill the gaps. That world doesn’t exist anymore.

Back to the hearing. Howard read accounts from ESD workers who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Their stories echoed Bertrand’s experience and painted a picture of a fear-driven, punitive management regime led by Miranda Gray. One anonymous employee, a 20-year veteran of ESD, wrote, “Never in my entire career have I seen a workforce so demoralized and fearful.”

The central event in this narrative was Gray’s decision last October to order her employees to return to the office, ending the option to work remotely with two weeks’ notice. Union leaders described this as a tremendous disruption to the lives of employees, who were suddenly forced to find ways to cover child care and home health care responsibilities they could handle by working from home. Howard noted that the work-from-home option was advertised as a perk of ESD employment to potential applicants. Well, it was until it was abruptly withdrawn.

In Bertrand’s telling, the regime of persecution began when she sent an email to DCF Commissioner Chris Winters about Gray’s decision, not as an ESD employee but as VSEA President, which she cc’d to all DCF staffers. She attached a letter from VSEA legal counsel seeking bargaining around the ESD policy change. An hour later, she got a reply from Winters “expresing dismay at my replying-all.”

He may not have liked that, but it does fall under the definition of “concerted activity.”

In Bertrand’s telling, which brought her to tears more than once, she has since been the target of harassment and retribution for her legally protected union activity. Hence the unfair labor practice complaint, which has yet to be adjudicated by the VLRB.

If you can spare the time, the hearing is worth a watch. It’s archived on YouTube; it lasted about an hour so it’s not too much of a demand on your attention.

At the end of the hearing, Human Services Committee chair Theresa Wood apologized to Bertrand “for everything that you’ve gone through.” She concluded by saying “I’m not exactly sure what we can do, but it won’t just stop here.”

I’ll bet it won’t. The relationship between ESD and the Democratic Legislature was already in terrible shape after years of contentious discussions of the General Assistance Emergency Housing program, a.k.a. the motel voucher program. Gray and her minions have sought to cut costs even if it means unsheltering large numbers of vulnerable Vermonters, while majority lawmakers have tried to find ways to preserve and extend the program. They have often been left unsatisfied by testimony from Gray and others in ESD and DCF. Well, unsatisfied is the polite way of putting it. The impolit version is that they feel consistently lied to about the impact of voucher cuts.

This also reflects poorly on Winters, who I guess I’ll have to start calling a “former Democrat.” He is either clueless about the goings-on at ESD, which would be a dereliction of his duty, or he is just fine with ESD’s culture of fear. Add this on top of his complicity in the steady diminution of the voucher program, and what you’ve got is a guy who was once a credible Democratic candidate for secretary of state but now appears to be a loyal functionary in one of the worst precincts of the Scott administration.