BRATTLEBORO — Outpatient support staff at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital primary care and speciality practices are unionizing.
After eight months of organizing, outpatient support staff in the primary care and specialty practices at BMH voted 29 to 18 on Thursday to set up a union, according to an announcement from AFT Vermont. The move follows a vote in February by inpatient staff to do so.
"We just want to make sure that we are heard and that we have a voice and are working with the BMH administration to make things better," Krystal Palmisano, certified medical assistant at Brattleboro Family Medicine and union organizing committee member, said in an interview Monday.
She described the effort coming out of wanting to be more involved in decision making and get livable wages, and having more staff and more consistent staffing. In an announcement about the union formalization, she said, "We give everything we’ve got, day in and day out, and yet many of us struggle to make ends meet or face the stress of growing workloads while being short-staffed."
Palmisano anticipates the process of officially unionizing will take seven days from the vote then a bargaining committee will take on the next steps.
"We look forward to working with the administration to make it mutually beneficial for all of us," she said.
Once the votes are certified, the practices support staff will begin the process of bargaining their first contract with the BMH administration, according to the announcement. The goal is to join with colleagues, who won their union election in February. According to information previously shared by AFT Vermont, ancillary staff at BMH consisting of 250 employees in support, tech, maintenance and the business office set up a union to negotiate a new three-year contract.
Peter Blackmer, chief human resources officer at BMH, said a stipulated agreement with AFT drew a boundary between inpatient and outpatient staff. Outpatient employees in Brattleboro Family Medicine and Putney Family Healthcare successfully voted to unionize last week.
"I expect that the labor board will notice both parties of our duty to begin collective bargaining," Blackmer said in an interview Monday.
An election last week for outpatient staff in specialty departments and the hospital itself was too close to call, Blackmer said. He anticipates a post-election hearing will be held by the labor board to determine the outcome.
AFT has represented union nurses at BMH since the 1980s, Blackmer said. Now, he counted five unions to negotiate contracts with.
"It's going to take time for the two parties, management and labor, to arrive at the contractual outcomes of that bargaining," Blackmer said.
BRATTLEBORO — By a vote of 123 to 57, support staff at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital said ye…
John Gibbs, orthopedics certified medical assistant and organizing committee, called the latest unionization "a big win for the clinical and support staff here at BMH." His hope is to secure better benefits and better pay at a time of uncertainty.
"I think when you have better pay and benefits, and you feel more secure in your job, you're able to provide, in this case, the exceptional care that our communities come to expect from BMH," he said in an interview Monday. "If you're worried about making ends meet, it might distract you from being able to perform your duties."
Gibbs worries about the potential for federal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. At an event at BMH last week, officials said the hospital was "Medicare dependent."
Blackmer called health care financing "a challenge, at best, even on a good day." Stakeholders include Medicare, Medicaid, and the federal and state governments.
More unions means more obligations to meet, Blackmer said.
"And we will meet all of our obligations under the law but our financial wellbeing is all the more in question with all of these obligations that we have," he said. "In my opinion, the future of BMH is without question. We are 100 percent committed to this community. The way in which we deliver our services, though, that is something we are working on ... The financial stability moving forward is absolutely critically important to us."
In Blackmer's experience, contracts with AFT can take six to 18 months to finalize.
"There is a lot of work to get an inaugural contract," he said, adding that it's premature to say what kind of conditions the administration would seek in one.
BRATTLEBORO — U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., stopped in to visit the folks at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital on Wednesday afternoon and thank them for all their hard work.
Unionizing provides more security for staff, Gibbs said. He anticipates some disagreement from the administration on certain items but believes both parties are on the same page when it comes to anticipating changes from the federal government and wanting to provide the best patient care possible.
In a union contract, Gibbs would like to see some extra money paid or "float differentials" when outpatient staff are sent to other departments than their regularly assigned one.
So far, Gibbs believes the move to form a union has had a positive effect on morale.
"I think everyone is excited about it," he said. "Not everyone is familiar about what being in a union means. I guess there will be a bit of a learning curve."
Nicole DiVita, an ophthalmic technician at UVM Medical Center and president for healthcare of AFT Vermont, said she's "thrilled" about the news.
"We are the fastest growing union in the state, representing over 11,000 healthcare and higher education professionals, including nurses and health professionals at five Vermont hospitals," she said in the announcement. "When health care workers have a voice, we raise the standard of care for our whole community.”
