The union representing health care and higher education employees, AFT Vermont, says it’s doubled the number of workers in its ranks over the last six years.
In the past three years, especially — since the COVID-19 pandemic — nurses, techs and support staff have organized at hospitals and clinics across Vermont.
Central Vermont Medical Center support staff are the latest to unionize after winning their election at the Berlin hospital earlier this month.
And late last week, support staff, techs and licensed practical nurses at Porter Medical Center voted to ratify their first contract negotiated with the Middlebury hospital.
For more on why this is happening now, and the impact on Vermont’s health care system, Vermont Public reporter Elodie Reed spoke with The Frequency podcast host Mitch Wertlieb. This interview 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.
Mitch Wertlieb: So Elodie, you’ve been checking in with health care workers who have been active in organizing and are now represented by AFT Vermont. What did they tell you about why they wanted to unionize?
Elodie Reed: Yeah, so I’ve called up support staff, techs and licensed nursing assistants at three different hospitals: Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, Porter Medical Center in Middlebury and the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. And what they all have in common is wanting to feel more valued and more heard in their workplace.
Heather Bauman is a phlebotomist at UVM Medical Center, and president of the UVMMC Support Staff United. She says one of the primary asks from support staff at the hospital was raising the starting wage from $15 an hour to $20 an hour. That’s what they negotiated in their first contract last year.
Heather Bauman: You can't live in Chittenden County on $15 an hour. And we were living proof of that — 70% of our bargaining unit was housing insecure. We were hearing stories about folks, you know, living in their cars, sleeping in the locker rooms.
Elodie Reed: Bauman says winning a $20 an hour minimum has had a huge impact.
Mitch Wertlieb: And you’ve reported, Elodie, in a previous story that health care workers want better staffing ratios, is that right?
Elodie Reed: Yes. They say this is both an issue of staff burnout and patient safety.
Ashley Copeland, for instance, is a licensed nursing assistant at Central Vermont Medical Center, where support staff just won their election to unionize. She says she often can’t get her own basic needs met at work.
Ashley Copeland: 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.
Elodie Reed: And they say staff safety is an issue, too. Licensed nursing assistant and mental health tech Chrissy Searles at Central Vermont Medical Center told me physical assault is really common in her workplace.
Chrissy Searles: I myself have been attacked, I can't tell you how many times. But I was head-butted by a patient one time.
Elodie Reed: And for that reason, health care workers are negotiating contracts that include paid administrative leave after a physical assault.
Mitch Wertlieb: What else are health care workers advocating for?
Elodie Reed: Things like scheduling flexibility, floating holidays, multilingual interpretation and increased transparency with management.
![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)
Mitch Wertlieb: And Elodie, do you have a sense of why these workers are doing this now?
Elodie Reed: Porter Medical Center radiologic technologist and union bargaining team member Maya Schnell said she was worried about staff retention and what that meant for health care in rural areas.
Maya Schnell: I feel that this is really important for not just myself, but everybody — and everybody now and in the future. I want to make sure this community is taken care of. It really scares me the state of rural medicine. … I want to make sure that everybody who lives in a beautiful place like this, you know, that we all care about, is able to come to the hospital and have enough people to safely care for them. And in order to do that, we need to be able to live.
Elodie Reed: Other health care workers said they had tried approaching management directly and that didn’t work. And that the current political environment was more friendly to unionization — and that they were encouraged by seeing similar unions form at nearby hospitals.
Mitch Wertlieb: Does the COVID-19 pandemic have anything to do with why all these health care workers are organizing in Vermont?
Elodie Reed: You’ve definitely seen a local surge in unionization in the years since the pandemic began.
Middlebury College professor of sociology Jamie McCallum has actually written an entire book about how the pandemic transformed the way workers fought for labor rights. And to be transparent, he’s actively supporting unionized health workers at Porter Medical Center.
Anyway, McCallum’s take is that the COVID-19 pandemic really elevated the importance of these health care workers’ roles by calling them “essential.” But then, that didn’t translate into working conditions that made them actually feel valued.
Jamie McCallum: I would say the conversation going on among low-wage health care workers is that, you know, "We went from heroes to zeros, and that for about a year and a half in America, we were like the front lines of fighting a battle, like to save human life." And then just as quickly, they went back to being basically disposable people who are a line on a hospital's budget ledger.
Elodie Reed: And McCallum argues that health care workers are basically saying now, "The bill is due. You can’t run hospitals without us, so treat us better."
Mitch Wertlieb: OK, but what are the hospitals saying about all this?
Elodie Reed: In response to staff members’ union activity, the three hospitals I’ve been reporting on — Central Vermont Medical Center, Porter Medical Center and UVM Medical Center — generally said they respect their employees’ right to organize. And that they want to work collaboratively with those unions. And that they're balancing providing benefits that will help recruit and retain staff — with keeping care affordable for the communities they serve.
Stephen Leffler: We just want to make sure that everyone has a voice, and that people vote.
Elodie Reed: This is Dr. Stephen Leffler, President of UVM Medical Center.
Stephen Leffler: So for our groups who want to unionize, we have made sure we've provided them information and made sure there was a vote, so all voices could be heard in that decision.
Elodie Reed: Leffler says upsides to employees unionizing have included better hiring and retention and wage increases. But he says a downside to staff unionizing can be that, when they negotiate a contract, they’re then locked in for the length of the contract, whatever is happening in the economy in the meantime.
Stephen Leffler: That's different than if people aren't unionized, and we can make rapid adjustments year to year if we need to.
Elodie Reed: According to the contract negotiated with support staff, administrators have been meeting with union members to discuss health benefit costs. And UVMMC spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote in an email that as a result, the hospital is making more effort to connect staff with available financial aid resources.
Mitch Wertlieb: And Elodie, I'm wondering if you have a sense for how more health care workers unionizing might impact Vermont’s health system at large?
Elodie Reed: Well, according to the hospitals, there’s a risk of increasing overall health care costs for patients.
For example, the UVMMC spokesperson told me that the nurses union contract negotiated over the summer, which included a 23% base wage increase over the next three years, forced UVMMC to request a higher commercial rate increase from state regulators.
But Vermont’s health care advocate, Mike Fisher, pushes back on directly correlating health care worker labor organizing and overall health care costs.
Mike Fisher: These hospitals, whichever one we're talking about, have C-suites, and pay, you know, pay the wages that they think they — that they justify as needed to pay for their executives. And I've never seen a hospital come and say, "We've had to increase our budget and our ask because of how expensive our administrative costs are."
Elodie Reed: Fisher says he’s generally hopeful that having health care workers at the decision-making table will improve the quality of care for Vermonters.
And Jamie McCallum, the Middlebury College professor, has actually done research that suggests this can be the case. He tracked how nursing homes with worker unions were associated with fewer deaths and infections from COVID-19.
So — I’ll be curious to see if any similar research comes out of Vermont in the wake of all these health care workers unionizing.
Corey Dockser provided the data infographic for this story.
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