Nurses and UVM Medical Center reach new contract agreement

Nurses at the University of Vermont Medical Center reached an agreement with hospital administrators on a new contract after threatening strikes during tense negotiations earlier this month. The contract was ratified in a vote last week.

The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals represents nearly 2,000 nurses at UVM Medical Center. The union had been negotiating with the hospital for nearly three months for significant pay increases when it announced a strike on July 1.

Two days later, the union and hospital negotiated a 23 percent wage increase over three years and the strike was called off. The remaining details were officially agreed upon in the final round of negotiations on July 8, union officials said.

From July 9 to 13, the entire union membership voted to ratify the contract, which passed with 1,408 votes in favor and 206 against, a representative said.

“The medical center is extremely pleased and grateful that our nurses ratified this contract,” UVM Medical Center President Stephen Leffler said in an interview Wednesday. “It averted a strike that would have been very difficult for our patients, our community and the hospital. So I’m really glad that we’re talking about the ratification today and not the impact that the strike has had on our community.”

Nevertheless, neither side is entirely satisfied with the final wage increase of 23 percent for the next three years.

Leffler said on July 2 that a raise above 20% during that period — her offer at the time — would force the hospital to either raise rates or reduce services. Meanwhile, nurse and lead negotiator Eisha Lichtenstein said after the contract was signed but before the vote was finalized that many members felt the increase would not be enough to persuade her to stay.

“I’ve heard from some of our nurses that it wasn’t enough to keep them here,” Lichtenstein said. “It’s tough. I wish we could have done better. But I know we worked super hard and used every tool we had at our disposal.”

The union said its initial proposal was a 40% pay increase through 2026, while the hospital’s was 11%. However, if you add in the 2% pay increases in each of the three years that most nurses would have received anyway, the figures would be 46% and 17% respectively.

The agreed 23 percent includes the three 2 percent increases, or “steps,” that nurses already receive each year for the first 24 years of their employment. However, under the new contract, the parties agreed to increase the maximum number of steps to 27, so that over the next three years all nurses will receive these steps, even those who had previously achieved the highest step.

In addition to the 2% salary increases they are already entitled to, nurses received a 5% salary increase following the ratification of the agreement and will receive 4% in October this year, 3% in October 2025 and 5% in October 2026, Liechtenstein said. This brings the total salary increase to 23%.

Lichtenstein said the union realized it had to agree on a pay package on July 3 because the hospital would have to invest significant sums of money in strike preparations from that point on and might not be able to come back with better offers afterward for financial reasons.

“This is not what we deserve. It’s not enough to cover our living expenses,” she said. “But we also realized that this was probably the best we could get.”

As part of the agreement on the pay package, Lichtenstein said, they agreed to remove an article from the proposal that would have required independent investigators into cases of bullying and harassment by supervisors. She said if a nurse reports being a victim of harassment, it is currently investigated internally, but to her knowledge, no supervisor has ever been held responsible for such a complaint since the union was formed in 2002.

The hospital tried to offer a compromise on the investigation article, but the union ultimately withdrew it, hospital spokeswoman Annie Mackin wrote Wednesday. She said the hospital insists on not paying expensive outside investigators because it already has a human resources team that takes complaints seriously.

Leffler said the hospital had already spent $780,000 as of July 3 to prepare for a possible strike and was preparing for more spending.

“At midnight, costs would have increased significantly,” Leffler said. “But by reaching an agreement and then withdrawing their strike notice, we were able to avoid a large portion of the costs for accommodation and travel.”

Mackin estimated that the total cost of a possible five-day strike would be around $10 million.

Although the collective bargaining agreement saved the hospital a significant amount of money, the agreed-upon 23 percent wage increase was above the 20 percent mark that Leffler had previously said was the most the hospital could offer within the fiscal year 2025 budget it presented to the Green Mountain Care Board on July 8.

On Wednesday, Leffler said the hospital was still evaluating how new expenses from the nurses’ pay raise would affect the proposals presented to the nursing board. Mackin wrote that the hospital hopes to have a clearer picture of the situation in the next week and to find the best solution.

After agreeing on the wage package and lifting the strike notice, the two sides met again on July 8 to put the finishing touches on the contract. But according to Lichtenstein, the hospital did not return to the negotiating table with the same willingness to negotiate.

“Good will was obviously not enough,” Lichtenstein said. “The threat of a strike was necessary for them to take us seriously, and that was really discouraging.”

Leffler said the hospital team took each round of negotiations seriously, whether money was the topic of discussion or not.

“The medical center negotiates every contract item in the same way, in the spirit of trying to achieve the best, fairest contract possible that works for the staff, the community and the hospital,” Leffler said. “In this Monday meeting, we took the same approach. We worked very hard with the union to reach a compromise on the remaining items, and I’m grateful we reached it this evening.”

At the July 8 negotiation session, the parties worked out the remaining details of the agreement, including adjustments to paid vacation, privacy and more.

The new agreement will give nurses more flexibility in using their paid leave, sick leave and bereavement leave, Lichtenstein said.

In previous contracts, emergency nurses were allowed to remove their last names from their badges if they wanted to for security reasons. Now, Lichtenstein said, all nurses hospitalwide are allowed to do so, except in certain cases where it is not permitted by law. Additionally, nurses who manage a unit now make $3 an hour more than the rest of the unit, Lichtenstein said, where previously there was no disparity.

Overall, the negotiating team was not satisfied with the result, said Lichtenstein, but was nevertheless grateful that a costly strike had been avoided. They were convinced that they had done everything possible to negotiate the best possible contract with the hospital.

“We fought every step of the way. It wasn’t given to us out of pure kindness, we had to force them to give it to us,” Lichtenstein said. “And in three years we will be ready to sit back at the negotiating table and fight again for better care.”