2,000 nurses to strike next week as UVMMC and union remain at odds

July 4, 2024

Flight tickets to Vermont and hotels in the Burlington area are being booked for next week. About 500 nurses are expected to arrive to work temporarily at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

To this end, the Vermont Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals union, which represents around 2,000 nurses, issued a strike notice on Monday evening at the end of collective bargaining negotiations with hospital management.

Negotiations have been ongoing since April, and the two sides continue to disagree on wage increases.

Union officials say they need better pay to attract and retain new nurses at the hospital. Their current proposal calls for a roughly 30 percent raise over the next three years. That would, the union says, bring the hospital up to par with other Level 1 trauma centers across the country based on cost of living.

Meanwhile, UVM Medical Center officials said they could not raise wages by more than 20 percent over the next three years without raising private insurance premiums or cutting benefits.

The difference between the two proposals is about $38 million, a hospital representative said.

More from Vermont Public: Nurses at Vermont’s largest hospital consider week-long strike

Due to the impasse, union members have called for a five-day strike starting on Friday, July 12.

“Either we leave now temporarily or we watch even more of our best nurses leave the hospital to travel or settle at an institution that respects them more,” Deb Snell, union president and a longtime intensive care nurse at the hospital, wrote in a press release this week.

“None of us want to strike,” said Benton Taylor, a nurse and member of the union’s bargaining committee. “We want to reach an agreement – we want to be valued, we want to be competitive, we want to bring people here, we want to take care of our community.”

The hospital had hoped to prevent such an incident.

“We don’t believe a strike is the solution – it will cost a lot of money, it will affect patients who have appointments for treatment, and it will cause tremendous emotional stress to the hospital,” Dr. Stephen Leffler, the medical center’s president, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

A sign with the inscription "Vermont Association of Nurses and Health Professionals." Behind it, on the other side of the street, are the large hospital buildings. — The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals office is across the street from UVMMC’s medical complex in Burlington. The hospital is preparing to hire about 500 temporary nurses next week.

He estimates that a five-day strike would cost the hospital between $10 million and $15 million in total, and says the medical center will spend $1.7 million this week alone on hotels and travel expenses for temporary workers.

“These people need to show up early to get their credentials, get their IDs, get oriented and attend the mandatory sessions,” Leffler said. “They’ll start showing up in four days.”

The nurses’ contract does not expire until the beginning of next week – and two more collective bargaining sessions are scheduled. Nevertheless, a strike seems likely.

“People are pretty upset, they’re struggling and they don’t feel like they have much power,” Taylor said.

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