[N]urses seeking to form a union at Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans said they were confident heading into last week’s vote that they had the numbers to make it happen. But they didn’t, at least not this time around.
It wasn’t even close: 101 nurses voted no on forming a union, while 57 voted yes.
Organizers who worked with pro-union nurses said they plan to file charges against the administration with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming illegal campaigning ahead of the vote.
Daren Villemaire, who was among the nurses who campaigned against forming a union, said the “healing process” had begun after a divisive process that pit colleagues against colleagues in the relatively small community hospital.
“It was a gift to give administration — the idea that you have a fair number of people dissatisfied with something and feeling you are not listening,” he said. “It’s not over — it’s just begun — and administration is the first one to say so.”
The issue at the center of the unionization effort was the increasing pressure on individual nurses amid staffing shortages at the hospital, an issue facing hospitals across the state and the country.
Those supporting a union argued that collective bargaining and negotiated contracts were the best way to ensure that nurses had the protections and resources they need to do their job. The administration said a union would create a hostile relationship between nurses and management, and would not address the staffing problems.
The pro-union side received 117 signatures on a petition last month in support of forming a union to give nurses a greater voice in decisions at the hospital.
Kasey Thompson-Lowell, a nurse at NMC who helped lead the unionization effort, said that she believed that many nurses changed their position due to efforts by the administration to address some of the underlying concerns and sow misinformation about the impact of a union.
“I think a lot of it was fear based after the hospital brought in some pretty powerful resources to confuse people,” she said of the apparent change of heart of many nurses over the past few weeks.
The hospital hired an attorney to meet with nurses in what they described as an attempt to “educate” nurses about labor laws. Thompson-Lowell said the messages included warnings about how schedules would become more rigid and wages less reliable over time.
She also said that management jumped into action when the union effort began in full, raising the salaries of nurses in some departments, agreeing to give nurses lower patient loads and increasing material resources such as linens available to nurses in the hospital.
Thompson-Lowell credited these changes with making some nurses question whether paying union dues was necessary to have their demands heard. But she and others worry that the administration’s responsiveness may be temporary.
Villemaire said that he believed some nurses only signed the initial petition in support of a union because they felt pressured to do so. “They wanted them to stop badgering them about it,” he said of those who signed the petition but then voted against a union in the end.
He added that the administration was making sincere efforts to attract new staff — through recruitment bonuses and tuition reimbursement for newly graduated nurses — and had effectively conveyed that ahead of the vote.
Villemaire added that he was disappointed with Attorney General TJ Donovan and Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman for rallying along with the pro-union nurses earlier this month, and assuming they represented the majority. “Neither one of those individuals asked any of us what we thought,” he said.
The Vermont branch of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents nurses at three hospitals in the state and helped organize the NMC union drive, accused the hospital’s administration of “illegal campaigning” ahead of the vote.
Nurses accused executives of explicitly warning some of them over their union-building activities, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. A spokesperson for the hospital categorically denied those claims.
A statement from the AFT addressed to the Northwestern nurses said the union will “review its options to challenge the election” and intends to file to file Unfair Labor Practice Charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
“You have bravely faced an administration that has clearly committed unfair labor practices in the conduct of this election,” Deb Snell, president of AFT Vermont, said in the statement. “We are not going away and we will continue to stand with you.”