Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and a union representing its nurses have reached a tentative agreement to avoid a strike amid a projected $14.5 million annual budget shortfall.
But southeastern Vermont’s main health care provider still faces threats of a walkout by support staffers unhappy with their own stalled contract talks.
The 160-member Brattleboro Federation of Nurses voted last month for a potential strike after objecting to proposed curbs on salaries and benefits. The union said it would give the hospital until last Friday to return with a “stronger” offer to replace a contract that expired Sept. 30. Then, just minutes before the start of the weekend, both sides announced a potential resolution, with release of specifics awaiting ratification by the nurses.
“This tentative agreement reflects the strength and unity of BFN nurses,” Tracy Ouellette, federation president, said in a statement, “and protects the standards that have supported safe, high-quality patient care in our community for decades.”
The prospect of a new contract hasn’t fully curbed the fear of a strike at the 500-worker facility, which is one of Brattleboro’s three largest employers. A second union — Brattleboro Healthcare United, representing 280 support staffers — recently authorized its own walkout “if necessary” amid its own negotiations.
Talks last week “did not go well,” said Hailey Escobar, a spokesperson for AFT Vermont, which represents the support staffers as well as 11,000 health care and higher education workers statewide.
“The team was pretty outraged at the end of the session,” Escobar said, “and is now in conversation about a potential 10-day strike notice.”
The two sides are set to meet again next week.
The hospital and its workers began contract talks last year, only to pause in the fall when state regulators questioned the accuracy of the hospital’s current $130 million operating budget — a move that led to the discovery of the $14.5 million deficit and the exits of the hospital’s chief executive and financial officers.
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