Milton Education & Support Ass'n v. Milton Board of School Trustees

For twenty years, Vermont law has consistently required a union’s waiver of statutory bargaining rights to be “conscious and explicit.” Relying on this precedent, the Vermont Labor Relations Board concluded that the union had not waived its statutory bargaining rights on subcontracting because the parties’ collective-bargaining agreement does not consciously and explicitly waive this right. Today, the majority abandons the conscious-and-explicit-waiver rule and concludes that the collective-bargaining agreement, completely silent on subcontracting, presents an issue of contract…