Following a vote of 244 to 66 in an election held Wednesday and Thursday, support staff will unionize at Central Vermont Medical Center. Once that vote is certified by the National Labor Relations Board, the union will represent nearly 450 employees at the Berlin hospital.
Licensed nursing assistant and union organizer Ashley Copeland says the bargaining team plans to negotiate for experience-based pay scales, work flexibility, safe staffing ratios, and more transparency with management.
She says she and her coworkers have been feeling burnt out, undervalued and undercompensated.
"Not even being able to get my basic needs met at work... things like, you know, going to the bathroom, actually, taking a lunch break, being able to breathe so that I could care for my patients. It made me feel like some change needed to happen," she says.
Copeland, who is 32 and has worked in health care since she was a teenager as not only as an LNA but as a rehab aid, housekeeper and kitchen staffer, says it will be particularly powerful for people in support roles to now have a voice at work.
"We've always been kind of the underdogs, and yet we're the foundation," she says. "Because you can't do any — you can't run or operate any facility, hospital or nursing home without support staff."
The support staff campaign went on for 10 months before this week's election. Organizer and LNA and mental health tech Chrissy Searles says it's been stressful for both management and staff, but that organizers expected to win the vote this week because of what they shared with coworkers.
![A photo of a woman with light skin and short dark brown hair. She's smiling and wearing a red shirt reading "we are CVHU. Recruit, [unknown], Respect."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/37aba9f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2316x3088+0+0/resize/840x1120!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2F26%2F26f0ab6e4c909397c609cef6a7a5%2Fchrissy-searles-courtesy.jpg)
"When people really got informed with the truth and what, what a union was — which was all of us coming together collaboratively, and for us all to come together to make a decision for all of us and what's best for all of us — I think a lot of people jumped on board with that," she says.
After the election, support staff members celebrated with pizza and bowling at Twin City Family Fun Center in Barre. The next step is to choose their bargaining team, then negotiate their first contract with CVMC.
In a statement shared with Vermont Public on Friday, CVMC wrote that it has "been steadfast in our commitment to engage in this process with integrity, truthfulness and adherence to the regulations set forth by the National Labor Relations Board."
The hospital also wrote that it was "committed to ensuring that we provide the highest possible quality of care for the communities we serve."
The CVMC support staff are the third group of Vermont hospital support staff to unionize in less than two years. They join support staff unions at Porter Medical Center in Middlebury and UVM Medical Center in Burlington, and all three are represented by AFT Vermont.
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