Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Mari Cordes, a registered nurse and the president of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals.
While most workers in the United States have the right to organize, that has not always been the case. Most private sector employees won the right to organize in the 1930s, but nurses who worked at nonprofit, non-governmental hospitals, such as Fletcher Allen, didn’t have the legal right to organize until 1974. This extension of rights was not without controversy; there were many who claimed that health care would fall apart and nurses would leave the profession if they were allowed to have a collective voice. None of that came to fruition.
There are still many who need legislation in order to legally organize. Today I watched the Vermont Senate take a unanimous vote on a bill that would allow home-health providers the right to organize. This is an exciting and important step forward for this profession and for the people and families they serve. However, it is very important to recognize that there are thousands of other Vermonters providing equally important services in our communities – the early educators who have been tirelessly working to have that same opportunity … and a small few in the Vermont Senate are denying them that opportunity.
Because childrearing and child care most often fall on the shoulders of women, policies and decisions concerning child-care services are of paramount concern to women. Moms need quality, affordable child care in order to work outside the home, which is essential to the Vermont economy.
I know firsthand how important it is to have the right to organize and to collectively negotiate. As a nurse at Fletcher Allen and other smaller hospitals and facilities in Vermont, I worked for 14 years without a union. Nurses were underpaid and overworked, morale was extremely low, turnover was astronomical, out-of-state agency nurses had to be hired – all of which negatively affected the quality of care. Through the union, we won substantial wage increases and, more importantly, a substantial increase in the number of nurses and a significantly better nurse-patient ratio. Our collective voice made significant improvements in the quality of care – our patients are safer and receive higher quality care because we have a collective voice.
I recognize the similarities between the challenges we had and those of the child-care and home-care providers – low wages, inadequate training opportunities, low morale, and very high turnover — and most of the workers in all three professions are women. This is especially relevant to the child-care provider organizing effort. Because childrearing and child care most often fall on the shoulders of women, policies and decisions concerning child-care services are of paramount concern to women. Moms need quality, affordable child care in order to work outside the home, which is essential to the Vermont economy.
Subsidies that providers receive to care for children from lower-income families usually do not come close to covering the provider’s actual costs. Because many families cannot afford co-pays that would allow the providers to be fairly compensated, the providers often forgo the co-pays and still serve the families in need of their care. It’s what women historically do – whether nurses or early childhood educators – they take care of the people in their communities, without regard to fair pay or the ability to access continuing education. It is time for these providers to be able to work collectively towards these improvements in the important work they do.
Organized early educators in other states have secured better and more regular compensation, expanded training, and respectful treatment. Unions are contributing to the development of a more stable and better trained workforce, which in turn enables providers to better support the children and families they serve.
Because there are few jobs with greater significance than caring for and educating our children, I sincerely hope that the Senate will stand up for early educators who have been tirelessly coming to the Statehouse for the last three years asking for the same rights the Senate granted unanimously today to home health providers. To deny their request would be confounding and inexplicable.
