Brattleboro Retreat management has fired union president and nurse Sy Creamer, and Retreat workers say they are planning to protest in response.
Creamer, who said she was told of the decision Monday, is the fourth union leader who has been fired, or departed under pressure, since last fall.
Creamer was put on administrative leave on May 4 after she included a patient number in an email that she sent to herself and then-union vice president Ed Dowd, she said.
“Staff have had it,” said mental health worker Rob Smith, who serves as the interim president for one of the Retreat’s two staff unions. Smith and other leaders will hold a press conference Thursday to announce two pickets, which will be held to protest Creamer’s firing and to call for the termination of chief nursing officer Meghan Baston.
The first protest will be for Retreat employees; the second will incorporate other unions, including the Windham County Labor Council, Creamer said. The dates of the protests have not yet been announced.
Brattleboro Retreat spokesperson Konstantin von Krusenstiern declined to respond to Creamer’s firing, saying that he could not comment on “specific personnel actions.”
“The Retreat takes seriously its patients’ privacy rights, and its own obligations under HIPAA and other laws to protect patients’ medical records and other health information,” Krusenstiern said in a statement provided to VTDigger. “We devote significant effort to training our staff in our collective duties to safeguard patients’ protected health information. Our patients are and will remain our number one priority.”
Creamer’s departure comes after months of tumult at the Retreat. As of Monday, 322 staff had left over the last 17 months, according to data from the nurses union. Workers told VTDigger last month that the resulting staff shortages had become dangerous to patients and staff alike. In one violent incident in April, a 12-year-old patient was sent to the hospital after he was attacked by other patients, according to multiple staff members. Workers reported a culture of retaliation and distrust of management.
Tensions have been exacerbated by the Retreat’s growing financial woes. President and CEO Louis Josephson said in January that the facility may have to close or downsize if the state didn’t provide a bailout. Since then, the Agency of Human Services has provided the Retreat with nearly $10 million in grants and loans.
The Retreat had not sought to address the concerns of its employees, Smith said. Administrators terminated the last remaining elected union official, “knowing it will be a huge blow to the workers,” he said. “There’s no attempt to improve relations” with staff. Smith also criticized the silence from the Retreat’s board.
“Does a Board of Directors have only an obligation to support the current administration, or do they also have a moral and fiduciary responsibility to the institution and ALL of its employees?” he wrote in a press release Monday. The union also sent out a list of complaints and grievances against Baston.
Creamer said she would be filing a grievance claiming that her firing was discriminatory, and asking for reinstatement. She also planned to remain president of the union while her case was in arbitration.
“To me it’s a bump in the road,” she said of her termination. “We’re just moving forward.”
In one sense, her firing would make it easier to work on behalf of other Retreat employees. “Now I can fight without fear of losing my job,” she said.
