Union members and their supporters attend a press conference where Deb Snell, head of the nurse’s union at the University of Vermont Medical Center, announced that the union will strike for five days starting July 12 during a press conference in Burlington on July 2, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Nurses at University of Vermont Medical Center agreed with hospital administrators on a new contract after tense negotiations that included a threat by their union to strike earlier this month. The contract was ratified in a vote last week.
The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals represents nearly 2,000 nurses at UVM Medical Center. The union had been negotiating with the hospital, asking for significant pay increases, for nearly three months when it issued a strike notice July 1.
Two days later, the union and the hospital agreed during bargaining to a 23% wage increase over three years and the strike was called off. In their final bargaining session on July 8, the remaining details were officially agreed upon, according to union representatives.
From July 9 to 13, the full membership of the union put the contract to a ratification vote, which passed with 1408 in favor to 206 against, a representative said.
“The medical center is extremely pleased and grateful that our nurses ratified this contract,” UVM Medical Center President Stephen Leffler said in an interview Wednesday. “It averted a strike, which was going to be very difficult for our patients, our community and the hospital to go through. And so I’m really happy that today we’re talking about ratification instead of the impact the strike had on our community.”
Nonetheless, neither side is completely satisfied with the 23% final figure for wage increases over the next three years.
Leffler said on July 2 that anything above a 20% increase over that time period — their offer at the time — would force the hospital to either increase commercial rates or decrease services. Meanwhile, nurse and bargaining team member Eisha Lichtenstein said after the contract was finalized, but before voting was completed, that many members feel the raise will not be enough to allow them to stay.
“I have heard from some of our nurses that it wasn’t enough to keep them here,” Lichtenstein said. “It’s tough. I would have liked to have done better. But I know we worked super hard and used all the tools we had available to us.”
The union said their first proposal was for a 40% increase in wages through 2026, while the hospital’s was for 11% — though, counting the 2% raises each of the three years that most nurses were already scheduled to receive, those numbers would have been 46% and 17%.
The agreed-upon 23% includes those three 2% raises, or “steps”, that nurses already receive each year for their first 24 years on staff. As part of the new contract, however, the sides agreed to raise the maximum number of steps to 27, so that for the next three years, all nurses would receive them including those previously at the highest step.
In addition to those 2% raises that they are already scheduled to receive, nurses received a 5% raise upon ratification of the contract and will receive 4% this October, 3% in October 2025 and 5% in October 2026, Liechtenstein said, for a total of 23%.
Lichtenstein said the union recognized that they needed to agree on a pay package on July 3, because after that point, the hospital would have to put a significant amount of money towards strike preparations, and may not have been financially able to come back with better offers after that point.
“It’s not what we deserve. It’s not enough to make up for cost of living,” she said. “But we also recognized that it was probably the best we were going to get.”
As part of the wage package agreement, Lichtenstein said they agreed to drop an article from their proposal that would have required independent investigators for cases of reported bullying and targeting by a manager. She said that currently, when a nurse reports being targeted, it is investigated internally, but to her knowledge, no manager has ever been found at fault for such a complaint since the union was formed in 2002.
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The hospital sought to offer a compromise on the investigation article, but the union ultimately withdrew it, hospital spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote on Wednesday. She said that the hospital was insistent on not paying for expensive outside investigators because it already has a human resources team that takes complaints seriously.
Leffler said that by July 3, the hospital had already spent $780,000 preparing for a possible strike, and it was preparing to spend more.
“At midnight that night, the costs were going to go up significantly more,” Leffler said. “But by getting a deal done and then withdrawing their strike notice, we were able to avert a lot of the costs for housing and travel.”
Mackin estimated the total costs of a potential five-day strike would be as high as around $10 million.
Though the contract agreement saved the hospital a significant amount, the agreed-upon 23% wage increases were above the 20% mark that Leffler previously said was the most the hospital could offer within the fiscal year 2025 budget it submitted to the Green Mountain Care Board on July 8.
On Wednesday, Leffler said that the hospital is still assessing how much the new expenses from the nurses’ raise would affect what had been submitted to the care board. Mackin wrote that the hospital hopes to have a clearer sense of the situation, and the best solution, in the next week or so.
With the wage package agreed upon and the strike notice rescinded, the two sides reconvened on July 8 to put the finishing touches on the contract. But according to Lichtenstein, the hospital did not come back to the table with the same willingness to negotiate.
“Good will was clearly not enough,” Lichtenstein said. “The threat of a strike was what was needed to get them to take us seriously, which was really disheartening.”
Leffler said that the hospital’s team took every bargaining session seriously, whether or not the money was the topic of discussion.
“The medical center negotiates every article of the contract in the same way, in the spirit of trying to get the best possible, fairest contract we can that works for the staff, the community and the hospital,” Leffler said. “In that Monday session, we took the same approach. We worked very hard with the union to come to a compromise on the remaining issues, and I’m grateful that we got it that night.”
In the July 8 bargaining session, the sides hashed out the remaining details in the contract, including tweaks to paid time off, privacy and more.
The new agreement will provide greater flexibility in how nurses can use their paid holidays, sick leave and bereavement leave, Lichtenstein said.
In previous contracts, emergency nurses were allowed to leave their last names off their badges if they chose to for safety reasons — now, Lichtenstein said, all nurses hospital-wide may do so except in certain cases where it is not legally permitted. Also, nurses in charge of a department will now make $3 per hour more than the rest of the department, Lichtenstein said, where there was not previously any differential.
Overall, Lichtenstein said that while the bargaining team wasn’t satisfied with where they landed, they were grateful to have avoided a costly strike and they believed they did all they could to negotiate the hospital for the best contract possible.
“We fought every step of the way. It was not given to us out of the kindness of their hearts, we had to force them to give it to us,” Lichtenstein said. “And we will be ready in three years to be back at the table, fighting to improve care once again.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Nurses, UVM Medical Center reach new contract agreement.