Two groups of nurses rallied outside the St. Albans hospital on Friday, one with signs reading “No $ for Union Busting” and “We support our nurses” and a smaller gathering about 100 feet away with signs saying “No Union” and “Our NMC Union Free.”
Nurses announced their intention last month to hold a vote of about 160 nurses at the hospital to decide on forming a union that proponents say would give nurses a stronger say in staffing decisions and bring stability to their jobs by negotiating a contract, something they do not currently have.
The administration says they are already working to address understaffing and other issues raised by the nurses, and that a union would not help matters. A representative of the hospital also denied claims from nurses that administrators have attempted to intimidate proponents of a union ahead of the vote.
About two dozen pro-union nurses coordinating with the Vermont Workers Association were joined by Attorney General TJ Donovan, a Democrat, and Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, a Progressive and Democrat, in their calls Friday to vote “yes” for a union.
Debby Choquette, a registered nurse at the hospital, said her colleagues had been “bullied and berated” by members of the administration in recent weeks. “We should not have to fear the loss of our jobs, or a change in our schedules or other recourse because we support our union,” she said.
Choquette claimed that Jill Berry Bowen, CEO of the hospital, had pulled one nurse into a room for 45 minutes to question her about union building activities, while the human resources director had taken another nurse away from patient care to issue a warning about improper communications related to union planning.
Choquette and other nurses said they had attempted to have their grievances heard through existing communication channels at the hospital, but that too often the result was inaction.
Kasey Thompson-Lowell, a registered nurse at NMC, said that since the administration became aware of the union plans, they have been more receptive to demands such as giving nurses the supplies they need and reducing the nurse-to-patient ratio for 1:5 to 1:4, but that a union-negotiated contract was needed to make sure those changes were carried out, and stayed in place.
“We stay and the administration comes and goes,” she said in an interview after the event. “We want something black and white, consistent month to month.”
Thompson-Lowell said she was confident that nurses would vote to form a union, based on conversations among colleagues in recent weeks.
Unlike the nurses union at UVM Medical Center who conducted a public campaign earlier this year that climaxed in a two-day strike in July, the NMC nurses are not calling for higher pay. Instead, they say that nurses are burning out because of overwork and unreasonable expectations fueled mostly by understaffing.
“Now I feel we’re pushing our people because their expected to be at a certain pace, people feel overwhelmed by that,” said Thompson-Lowell. “Nurses if they’re at that point are not retained, they’ll go to another facility where they have a union and can be supported by nurses who can speak up on their behalf.”
Samantha McCarthy, another nurse in favor of unionizing, said that at a relatively small community hospital like NMC it was particularly important to retain the limited pool of nurses who lived in the area.
“We are this community. We are working hard for our people,” she said during the rally. “So what keeps us here? Having the ability to advance, having the ability to feel safe at our job, having the ability to work together.”
The Workers Association also collected more than 400 signatures from community members saying that the hospital should stop spending money on lawyers to fight the union and instead put that money toward hospital care.
“I think if you’re in a formal legal matter, which the filing of a petition to consider an election is, the prudent use of resources is to make sure you stay within the parameters of the law,” he said.
Billings categorically denied “anyone having been threatened or intimidated throughout the process,” which he noted would be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“I would be comfortable saying, ‘I don’t believe the union is the right match for this organization,’” he said. “I think we are best served if our administration and management and nurses and medical staff are all working well together.”
Billings said he was not convinced that collective bargaining would deliver on what nurses were asking for, such as a stronger voice in decisions being made at the hospital. “I’m not sure the union provides that in a way that people might be looking for,” he said.
He said the hospital was dedicated to improving staff retention through bonuses for nurses who help recruit qualified colleagues, attractive benefits packages, school tuition reimbursement and loan repayment programs.
Whatever the result of Wednesday’s vote, he said “it becomes a new day for us, that this process has happened I think everyone involved has learned from it and we will figure out how to go forward.”
Daren Villemaire was among the nurses who rallied against a union on Friday. He said in a phone interview Friday evening that he did not believe a union would help solve the problems being talked about.
“The union cannot create nurses for us, they cannot staff us, if the union could help with those kind of things I may be speaking from a different position today,” he said. “The union is able at this juncture to make promises that they can’t follow through on.”
Villemaire said the administration had been receptive to his complaints in the past and in his experience kept an open-door policy for feedback from staff. He said he worried that a union would change the culture at the hospital for the worse.
“We have this hometown feel that I think would be forever changed with a union here,” he said. “It creates an adversarial relationship with administration that everything has to be negotiated.”
Villemaire predicted that the “no” vote would win the day on Wednesday. “But I would be lying if I said I didn’t think it’s going to be a close vote,” he added.
