The unionized ranks among Vermont’s health care workers continue to grow.
About 80 health professionals at Porter Medical Center in Middlebury will form a union with AFT-Vermont after voting 53-12 in favor of unionization Tuesday. The 25-bed critical access hospital is part of the University of Vermont Health Network. It also includes a 98-bed long-term care facility and serves about 30,000 people around Addison County.
The new bargaining unit includes health workers that span several disciplines, including certified nurse midwives, physician assistants and rehabilitation therapy workers. Despite that diversity, Jon Ford, a physician assistant and member of the union’s organizing committee, said that “unifying elements” came up during the unionization drive.
“I think the most common themes were a desire to have a sustainable profession, a professional life, and strive to have equity within similar roles that are within our maturing health network,” he said.
A second election, however, was a bust for the union on Tuesday — a small group of nurses voted 6-6 about joining the hospital’s pre-existing nurses union.
The union had originally sought to include the smaller group of nurses in the larger bargaining unit of health professionals that formed Tuesday, said AFT field organizer MacArthur Stine. But the hospital asked for the groups to be separate, which required two elections.
“Porter Medical Center respects the right of our employees to decide whether they want to join a union and strongly encourages participation to ensure every voice is heard,” hospital spokesperson Phillip Rau said in a statement. “We remain committed to fostering a culture where our people feel heard, respected, and supported.”
The union elections this week follow a remarkably successful string of unionization efforts across Vermont’s health care sector in recent years, including at Porter, at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington and the Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin.
AFT-Vermont now represents more than 12,000 workers in health care and higher education, according to Nicole DiVita, a certified ophthalmic technician at the University of Vermont Medical Center and AFT’s president for health care. The union’s rolls have roughly doubled in the last five to six years, she said, in part because of the enormous stress health care has been under since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Health care in this state is challenging. Not only is there an affordability crisis, there's also a crisis for access, and that deeply affects health care professionals as well. So you are seeing people wanting a say in their workplace,” DiVita said.
Once the National Labor Relations Board certifies the election results, the new bargaining unit at Porter can start negotiating for a contract with the hospital.
