Editor’s note: This article is by Keith Whitcomb Jr., of the Bennington Banner, in which it was first published Oct. 15, 2015.
[B]ENNINGTON — A dispute over nurse work schedules has the Vermont Veterans Home and the Vermont State Employees’ Association looking for a mediator.
The Vermont Veterans Home Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to seek out a mediator to reach a compromise between the Home’s administrators and the union, which represents the Home’s nursing staff. In the meantime, the current method of scheduling will remain in effect.
The request for a mediator was made by the union. Only two trustees voted against it.
The crux of the dispute is this: The Home’s administrators say the current method of scheduling has led to too many call-outs and too much spent in overtime pay. Nursing staff say the new schedule will make those problems worse and increase the levels of burnout among employees.
Vermont Veterans Home administrator, Melissa Jackson, said the Home has already spent $133,000 more than the $100,000 budgeted for overtime this fiscal year and will more than likely have to go before the state Legislature to seek a budget adjustment.
The timing of that request will not be good, according to Joseph Krawczyk, chairman of the Home’s Board of Trustees. That’s because on Jan. 13 a report from a committee created by the Legislature to examine the Home’s future financial stability will be due. The Home currently receives 25 percent of its funding from the state, and for the past year or so there have been questions and controversies surrounding the issue of how to, or even if it should, decrease its dependency on money from the general fund.
Vermont Veterans Home’s Director of Nursing Services Christina Cullinane explained to the trustees that on Nov. 1 the plan was to move the nursing staff to a “four on, two off” schedule. Someone on it would work four days straight, have two off, then work another four.
“The schedule management put out has serious deficiencies. First of all, it barely, and sometimes doesn’t, meet state minimum nursing standards,” said Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association who attended the board meeting. “Secondly, it has collective bargaining impacts that will create grievances that are unnecessary. It has impacts on the lives of the people who are here today and the nurses on the floor that they simply can not tolerate.”
He said under the current contract, the employees are under a five-day, 80-hour work week, which he said the schedule proposed by management doesn’t meet.
“My phone has been lighting up for days from the folks who work here who are not at all ready to try this schedule for six weeks,” he said.
He agreed with Krawczyk that now is not a good time for the Home to have internal strife, but 80 percent of the nursing staff have signed a petition saying they have severe problems with the scheduling method the administration has proposed.
The administration and staff have been working together on a scheduling plan for some time now. Jackson said in an interview that it’s been going on for the past 60 to 75 days, and at one point the deadline for the switchover was extended by 30 days.
Howard said in an interview that he learned of this problem from the employees on Monday after the administration decided not to put the two schedules up for a vote.
Jackson said she had told the employees that if their plan was close enough to the administration’s then there would be a vote among them on which they preferred, but what the employees came up with did not address the issues the administration says need addressing, so she made an executive decision to make the change.
A mediator will be agreed to from a state-approved list within 10 days. A mediator does not make binding decisions.
