A frame from the VSEA's "A State Employee Can Dream..." video
Gov. Peter Shumlin is appearing in Dave Bellini's dreams.
Bellini likes what he hears — the governor pledging to stand up for state workers — until he wakes up and realizes the dream was too good to be true.
That's the gist of a new Vermont State Employees Association video featuring Bellini, a Department of Corrections worker and union activist. It was posted to YouTube early this week and is featured on the VSEA's website and Facebook page.
The video makes use of footage from a 2010 meeting between Shumlin, then a candidate for governor, and the VSEA. At the time, then-governor Jim Douglas had recently pushed steep job cuts to the state workforce.
"I've never seen such a demoralized workforce," Shumlin says in the 2010 remarks. "I don't blame you for being demoralized. And when they lay off 400 state workers, they celebrate. I will put an end to that era. No more cuts ... I'm here to tell you that I've been saying consistently, we can't deliver the services Vermonters expect with the employees we have right now. How could we possibly say we're going to cut more?"
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