Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals announced today that they are holding a public Vote of No Confidence. The Vote of No Confidence is set to target UVM Medical Center CEO John Brumsted and President Eileen Whalen, along with the hospital Board of Trustees. VFNHP said in a press release Thursday that the hospital’s recently released Form 990 tax statement "expos(es) the exorbitant executive salaries earned by these administrators while nurses are still fighting without a contract for safe staffing and fair wages." The VFNHP press release said they are taking action to hold the administration accountable to the community it serves.
The current administration, the nurses said, has demonstrably failed to uphold its commitments to community as UVMMC fell out the rankings of the national top 20 academic hospitals for the first time in seven years and is responsible for provoking the first Unfair Labor Practices Strike in the hospital’s history, all while increasing executive compensation to its highest levels at the expense of front-line caregivers in a glaring exposure of the Trustee’s misplaced priorities.
“The Board of Trustees has still refused to meet with nurses since we wrote to them in early July. They seem to have forgotten that they must represent us, too—the staff and the community—not just senior management” says VFNHP Executive Vice President Deb Snell. The board ignored an additional August letter from Senator Bernie Sanders, who wrote “The primary responsibility and obligation of any non-profit board is not to management, but to the organization, and that includes providing oversight and guidance on issues related to the organization’s workforce.”
The vote is open to UVMMC employees and the public, and will run until September 20. The public petition reads, “UVM Medical Center, and the hospitals and clinics in the UVM Medical Center network, belong to us, the people of Vermont and Upstate New York, and we demand that they are accountable to us.” The online petition can be found at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/vote-of-no-confidence.
The union plans to take the results of the vote to the UVMMC Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday, September 20.
In response, UVMMC spokesman Michael Carrese offered this statement: "After many months andmore than 25 bargaining sessions withour nurses’ unionto arrive at a contract that both sides can feel good about, we owe it to our nurses, our other colleagues, our community and especially our patients to focus our collective energies on reaching an agreement. We are disappointed union leaders are focused on today’s press conference and issues that do not get us closer to resolution. Our latest offer is fair and competitive and provides wage increases of 15% over three years with significantly more – up to 30% – for some nurses.It is our hope all of our nurses will be given the opportunity to weigh in soon on whether to accept this offer."
Most Recent UVMMC Proposal
Source: Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. UVMMC 8.30.2018