Hospice staff at the University of Vermont Health Network Home Health & Hospice voted overwhelmingly in favor of formalizing their union on Thursday after roughly six months of organizing.
The vote came as hospice employees and management at the nonprofit subsidiary of the UVM Health Network have continued to spar before the National Labor Relations Board over who exactly has the right to join Hospice United, which will operate under the umbrella of AFT-Vermont.
“Hospice care is unique in the fact that the team model is interdisciplinary, so it’s only natural to all of us that our bargaining unit would represent all of the voices of the team,” said Nell Smith, who works as a volunteer coordinator for UVMHN Home Health & Hospice. “I have trust that that will happen.”
UVM Health Network Home Health & Hospice provides long-term care for people with severe health needs, as well as palliative and hospice care for people with terminal illnesses. Hospice United will only represent employees who contribute to the hospice side of the organization’s operations.
Organizers maintain that the union should encompass roughly 85 hospice employees, including nurses, social workers, chaplains and bereavement coordinators, among other staff members. Management, meanwhile, contends that about 15 of those employees should be excluded from the union, arguing that some of those positions — such as chaplains and bereavement coordinators — do not have the right to collectively bargain with the rest of the unit.
According to Emma Galvin, an organizer with AFT-Vermont, 56 staff members voted 49-7 to formalize the union. Also, 13 additional employees voted “under challenge,” meaning that, because the hospital administration is currently challenging their right to be in the unit, their votes would have only been tallied in the case of a close vote.
As employees and administrators at UVMHN Home Health & Hospice continue to dispute the scope of the union, both groups will begin to look toward negotiating their first bargaining agreement.
“Throughout this process, HHH has focused on ensuring hospice staff had an opportunity to have their voices heard,” said a statement released by the UVMHN Home Health & Hospice. “We believe the election administered on-site by the National Labor Relations Board met that goal and expect to be in contact with the union soon to begin negotiating in good faith a collective bargaining agreement.”
AFT-Vermont currently represents over 11,000 health care and higher education workers in Vermont, a number that has grown sharply in recent years as large swaths of the state’s health care workforce have sought to organize for better wages and working conditions.
Over 100 nurses at the Northwest Medical Center in St. Albans unionized in February as a part of AFT-Vermont.
The union now represents all seven locations within the University of Vermont Health Network, which includes three hospitals in Vermont and three hospitals in New York as well as the home health and hospice organization.
In 2023, over 2,000 support and technical staff at the UVM Medical Center joined the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, nearly doubling the size of Vermont’s largest health care union, which falls under the penumbra of AFT-Vermont. Later that year, over 300 nurses and technical staff at Central Vermont Medical Center voted to join AFT-Vermont as well.
In March 2024, a similar number of support and technical staff at Porter Medical Center, the third Vermont hospital in the health network, also joined the union.
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To support this work, please visit vtdigger.org/donate.