[B]URLINGTON – University of Vermont Medical Center’s striking nurses will return to work Saturday morning, ending a two-day strike that has cost the hospital about $3 million.
Sometime soon – possibly next week – the nurses’ union and hospital administrators will restart contract talks.
But it’s unclear what will happen after that. It’s also unclear whether the work stoppage may have pushed the sides further apart, though hospital President Eileen Whalen struck a conciliatory note at a Friday press conference.
“I don’t think (the strike) has moved us closer, but I also don’t think it’s been detrimental as it relates to bargaining and our ability to negotiate together,” Whalen said. “It’s been a really difficult thing for our organization. We are well aware of the need to bring people people back together.”
Union leaders also are hoping for a positive outcome. But they aren’t ruling out the possibility of a second strike if negotiations don’t progress.
“There has been talk about that,” said Julie MacMillan, a registered nurse and the union’s lead negotiator. “My hope is that the hospital will finally hear our concerns and that they will recognize that they cannot function without us.”
The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals’ contract for about 1,800 licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and nurse practitioners at UVM Medical Center expired on Monday. The union and hospital administrators negotiated for more than three months before talks ended Wednesday night.
Sticking points have remained the same throughout negotiations: The union says substandard wages have caused chronic staffing shortages, leading to nurse burnout and gaps in patient care.
Hospital administrators counter that their vacancy rate is on par with other health care facilities in Vermont and nationally. They say they’ve hired nearly 100 nurses since March, and they contend their raise offer – 13 percent over three years – is fair.
Nurses are asking for a 23 percent increase over three years. They say their pay should be on par with wages paid to other affiliated hospitals in New York State.
The nurses began a 48-hour strike at 7 a.m. Thursday. Hospital operations have continued due to the arrival of nearly 600 replacement nurses sent by Colorado-based Autumn Consulting Services, which specializes in assisting hospitals with health care work stoppages.
Administrators also said 93 union nurses chose to come to work Friday.
There has been much speculation about the hospital’s cost for replacement labor during the strike. On Friday afternoon, Whalen said it’s “somewhere around $3 million,” which includes salaries, travel and lodging.
That number is not yet final. “It may be higher, it may be lower, but that’s where we are at this point,” Whalen said.
UVM Medical Center leaders say the result of their contingency planning and spending is a hospital that’s running relatively smoothly despite the strike. Chief Medical Officer Isabelle Desjardins said nursing shift transitions went well, and she said emergency room, trauma and urgent care services functioned normally on Friday.
There were 368 patients in the hospital at the beginning of the day, down slightly from Thursday. And while the hospital did cancel 68 elective surgical procedures due to the strike, Desjardins said all remaining surgeries were completed.
Whalen added that “the vast majority of patients with scheduled (outpatient) appointments did not experience problems seeing their clinicians” on Thursday and Friday.
Representatives of the state Division of Licensing and Protection, which regulates hospital operations in Vermont and follows up on complaints, were at UVM Medical Center Friday. That fueled speculation that something was amiss in connection with the strike.
But Whalen said hospital administrators had been in touch with the state agency earlier this week and had been “in regular communication with the division throughout the strike.”
“We understand from other hospitals that have experienced strikes that it’s common for surveyors and regulators to have a presence during these situations to ensure patient safety,” Whalen said.
She added that “surveys and inspections are common here. We have had over 120 in just the last several years alone.”
Outside the hospital, nurses thronged around the main entrance on Colchester Avenue for their second day of picketing.
They carried signs bearing the union’s primary slogan, “patients before profits,” as well as some more-inventive placards. One blended the likenesses of hospital CEO John Brumsted and President Donald Trump, along with the hashtag #DUMPBRUMP.
Nurses had set up a small encampment on both sides of the street. There were folding chairs, a small tent, tables loaded with food and a spot set up for a guitarist singing labor-themed songs.
There also was the near-constant blare of car horns and responding cheers from striking nurses.
“The community support and the patient support has been outstanding,” MacMillan said. “It’s really been inspiring.”
All of that infrastructure and activity will be gone Saturday morning after nurses return to work. While Whalen said hospital leaders are focused on “welcoming the nurses back into the organization,” MacMillan said she expected that some nurse-supervisor relations might be strained.
“We anticipate that there will be some hard feelings,” MacMillan said. “We will definitely be monitoring any outward signs of attempts to intimidate and certainly will be documenting any signs of retaliation.”
Asked whether the strike had deepened a rift between the union and management, Desjardins said she believes there’s too much common ground and shared purpose for that to happen.
“We’re Vermonters. We live here. We work here. We’ve been here for a long time,” she said. “And I would not characterize this as a rift. It’s a difference of opinion.”
“We just need to stop and take a pause and engage in discussions … this is what we’re going to do,” Desjardins added.
Whether those discussions produce a new contract is another matter. A hospital spokesman on Friday produced figures showing that the two sides’ salary requests are $14 million apart in terms of wages that would be paid over the life of the contract.
MacMillan said the union would contact the hospital on Monday to schedule a new bargaining session. “Our hope would be, sometime next week, to go back to the table and keep talking,” she said.
MacMillan acknowledged that the union’s wage proposal has “a big price tag.” But she also said the hospital has “kept things stagnant for a decade, so we’ve got some catching up to do.”
On Friday, Whalen again said she believes the union’s salary request is “unrealistic.”
“But I’m very much aware that we have to come together at the table and figure out, what’s the right number,” she said.
Hear audio and analysis from the nurses’ strike on this week’s Deeper Dig podcast:
