Leaders of the largest hospital in Vermont have officially recognized a union of the medical center’s lowest ranking doctors.
Citing burnout, poor working conditions and patient safety concerns, medical residents at the University of Vermont Medical Center announced their intention to unionize last month.
Hospital management at the time declined to recognize the union, pending an official vote and certification by the National Labor Relations Board. The hospital’s refusal meant the newly formed union couldn’t bargain on behalf of members.
That changed Thursday after residents voted 209-59 to form the union as a local chapter of the Committee of Interns and Residents. Representatives from the Burlington chapter were not available for comment Friday, but the vote was announced on social media by the national union.
Hospital spokesperson Annie Mackin said on Friday that management and the union would begin negotiations “soon.”
University of Vermont Medical Center, the only teaching hospital in Vermont, has roughly 350 medical residents. These newly graduated doctors train for three years or more at academic medical centers such as UVMMC. Notoriously underpaid and overworked, residents at hospitals all over the country have formed unions to improve their working conditions and pay.
Residencies give new doctors a place to train and specialize. Hospitals, in return, get additional medical personnel for a fraction of the cost of hiring full-fledged physicians. The average resident earned $64,000 in 2021, according to an industry survey. The median income for physicians in 2020, by comparison, was more than $200,000, the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.
Recognition of the UVMMC residents’ union comes at a moment of widespread unrest in the nation’s labor force. Low-wage workers at Amazon warehouses and Starbucks locations have been part of a recent wave of unionization.
Collective bargaining has shown some recent successes when it comes to wages and working conditions. In February, management granted immediate pay bumps to most members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, a union that represents some 2,400 health care workers at UVM Medical Center.
Residents at hospitals in Massachusetts, Oregon and Illinois have already formed local chapters of the Committee of Interns and Residents, according to the industry magazine Becker’s Healthcare Review.
