Vote “YES” on Proposal 3
Vermont Proposal 3, officially called the Right to Collective Bargaining Amendment, is a legislatively referred constitutional amendment scheduled to appear on the ballot on November 3, 2026. It would enshrine Vermonters’ right to organize, join labor organizations, and bargain collectively through representatives of their choosing. By placing these protections in the state constitution, the proposal would help ensure that workers’ ability to act together is not left vulnerable to changing laws. It would also prohibit laws that interfere with these rights, including “right-to-work” laws, protecting employees’ ability to have a meaningful collective voice in the workplace. The proposal is drafted in language that would apply to all workplace contexts, so the amendment would not simply reproduce existing statutory protections but would instead establish a constitutional floor that legislators could not undercut without voter approval.
The bill’s central safeguard would establish a constitutional minimum that legislators could not weaken without voter approval, ensuring that any future attempt to diminish these protections would require direct public consent.
The need for this bill is underscored by Wisconsin’s experience with 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, which significantly restricted the rights and compensation of state and local government employees. To secure passage, legislative Republicans removed budgetary provisions from the bill, allowing it to avoid budget-related quorum requirements. Act 10 demonstrates how quickly statutory protections can be weakened through legislative action. The examples below show how the law enabled legislators to limit collective bargaining and override protections established in bargaining contracts.
Act 10 sharply curtailed collective bargaining for most public employee unions, while exempting certain public safety unions, including police, firefighters, and sheriff’s deputies. It also made union certification and retention more difficult. These changes were part of a broader shift in which employees bore more retirement costs, employer contributions to health insurance were capped, and employees who engaged in work stoppages or strikes faced greater risk of dismissal. The law also enabled changes to state Medicaid programs. Taken together, these provisions did more than limit bargaining: they reduced employees’ ability to negotiate the terms of their compensation and working conditions, illustrating how statutory protections can be weakened through legislation. The sections of Act 10 that most directly affected employee bargaining power, including the restriction of negotiations to base wages and the annual recertification requirement, illustrate how a single statute can reshape the entire framework of public-sector labor relations.
Employees were required to contribute more toward their pensions, reducing take-home pay while maintaining pension funding at existing levels. This shifted a greater share of pension costs onto workers and cut their current compensation. Because pension contributions are part of total employee compensation, the change reduced employees’ overall compensation even where pension benefits remained unchanged.
Act 10 further shifted health-care costs onto state employees by requiring them to pay at least 12.6% of the average annual premium. It also required changes to plan design sufficient to reduce current premiums by 5%, adding another constraint on employees’ health benefits and reinforcing the law’s broader reduction of public employees’ compensation.
The law sharply restricted collective bargaining for most public employees by limiting negotiations primarily to wages. Even those negotiations were tightly constrained: total wage increases could not exceed a cap tied to the consumer price index unless voters approved a higher increase through referendum. For teachers, negotiated increases applied only to base wages, excluding additional salary. Contracts were limited to one year, and wages remained frozen until a new contract was settled. Together, these rules curtailed workers’ ability to negotiate compensation and working conditions and weakened the stability of collective agreements.
The law also made it harder for unions to remain effective. Collective bargaining units had to hold annual votes to maintain union certification, while employers could no longer collect union dues and employees could not be required to pay them. These provisions took effect as existing contracts expired, directly disrupting established agreements and union operations. They predated the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus decision, which separately addressed public-sector agency fees. Taken together, Act 10’s restrictions show how legislation can narrow collective bargaining rights while also making it more difficult for workers to sustain the organizations that represent them.
Act 10 also eliminated the collective-bargaining rights of home health care workers under the Medicaid program and family child care workers, extending the law’s reach beyond traditional public-sector employees and further demonstrating how statutory protections can be withdrawn through legislation.
In effect, Act 10 told public employees, “This is what you get,” while sharply restricting their ability to negotiate wages and other contract terms collectively.
Proposal 3 has demonstrated sustained, bipartisan support in Vermont’s Legislature. The Senate passed it unanimously in April 2024 while the House approved it 129–8. This broad support across both chambers and across party lines underscores the proposal’s substantial legislative backing.