Earlier this year, around 300 licensed practical nurses, support staff and technical employees at Porter Medical Center voted to unionize.
That’s nearly half the people the Middlebury hospital employs.
The union is currently negotiating a contract with Porter, asking for higher pay, better staffing ratios and more sustainable work schedules.
Vermont Public reporter Elodie Reed met with three bargaining team members outside the hospital to hear about their work there — and what they want to improve.
This story was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Dawn Hart: My name is Dawn Marie Hart. I'm a surgical tech.
Maya Schnell: Hi, I'm Maya Schnell, and I am a radiologic technologist.
Lori Gould: I am Lori Gould, and I am an LNA at Helen Porter Nursing & Rehab, on memory care.
Dawn Hart: My work day starts when I get up at 4:15 in the morning. I drive an hour to get here. Clock in at 6:30. We prepare the room for surgery. We open instruments, supplies. Patient comes in the room. I assist with the surgeries, so I'm right up there with the doc, passing the instruments and things like that. And then when the case is done, we clean the room and do it all over again. And I work until three, and then I drive an hour and 15 minutes home.
I stay here when I'm on call. Our call-back is 20 minutes, and we get paid $5 an hour to be on call. I live one hour away, so obviously I have to stay. Currently the call room it's — it's not a conducive, mentally healthy place to stay. It's one room, there's no window, and we're there for 48 hours on a weekend.
Maya Schnell: So my day usually starts at around seven. I work — honestly, my schedule is a little inconsistent. We just don't have enough people, and we don't have enough people in the roles that we need. I am certified in many modalities. I bounce around: you know, one minute I'm in CAT scan, then I have to run in to take over mammography, then I have to run up to the OR. I'm dealing with traumas from the ER and CAT scan. I'm dealing with sometimes violent patients.
Dawn Hart: Alone.
Maya Schnell: Yeah, there's a lot of adrenaline involved. It's exhausting.
Lori Gould: So I arrive here around 6:45. And then we have about eight residents we have to take care of. We gotta get them up, ready for the day, have breakfast. And by the time we're done with our assignment, it's 11 o'clock, so now it's lunch time, so we start the process all over, and then we do afternoon toileting. And it's just ongoing, ongoing. And there's only four of us, four LNAs for 28 residents.
And it’s a lot. I see the struggle, and I just think it could be better. It can be a lot better. I know they say, ‘"h, one more person, then you want one more." But one more person would make a difference.
Elodie Reed: So staffing ratios, and also pay?
Lori Gould: Pay, yeah, the pay. I worked almost 200 hours in the last month just so I could pay my back-year property taxes. So, yeah. As I grow a bond with the residents and my coworkers, definitely not the pay or the work conditions, but — that's why I've chosen to stay. I have looked. But it's hard to walk away.
Maya Schnell: A lot of us have been here for a very long time. And when everybody's left because they've had to move away or they've taken other jobs with higher pay, you know, we are the people that have remained because we care about it here.
It's different in rural communities, it's hard to find people. What we feel very strongly about is we are part of this network, the UVM Health Network. And at UVM, which is not that far down the road, people in my role are making significantly more. To keep people here, you — you have to recognize that this is a different type of environment, and we're just as important. And we deserve to be compensated like the rest of the people in our network.
We've just started to talk about wages. And it is clear that there's not a lot of — so far, there hasn't been a whole lot of compromise.
Dawn Hart: I think we're wanting to get it ratified by, like, mid-September. I just want to reiterate that we're not trying to be troublemakers. We — we're not trying to cause problems. We just want to be taken better care of so we can take better care of our community.
We love our jobs, we love what we do. We don't dispute that, and we come to work every day, but we just need a little extra help so that we can do our best at what we do.
The union is hosting a rally on Saturday, Aug. 24 to raise awareness and gather community support. It starts at 1 p.m. on the Middlebury Green.
Porter Medical Center sent a statement to Vermont Public, which we’re sharing in full:
"Porter is committed to a culture where our people feel heard, respected, and supported. As Addison County’s community hospital, every one of our employees is central to delivering exceptional patient care. We were able to reach a very meaningful contract for our nurses last year and are committed to bargaining in good faith and reaching a fair agreement with our Techs and Support Services union.
"We’re working towards a contract that builds on our ability to recruit and retain our techs and support staff, each of them vital to providing high-quality care to our patients. At the same time, we must balance that need with ensuring affordability of care. We are encouraged by the progress of negotiations so far, demonstrated by the 33 articles that we have already signed tentative agreements on, and believe we should be able to complete negotiations on our original September timeline.
"We are looking forward to continuing to build a strong relationship with the Techs and Support Services union for many years to come and have appreciated the collaborative and transparent conversations during these negotiations."
Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message.
_
