In the face of layoffs and budget cuts from Vermont’s leading healthcare provider, members of the University of Vermont Health’s unions gathered for a town hall discussion on Sunday. Hosted by Vermont May Day Strong, a coalition of workers, unions, and community organizations in the state, the health care workers discussed how these cuts will dramatically reduce the quality of patient care. As they wrap up their bargaining sessions, workers are demanding safe staffing and higher wages to retain staff.
Members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (VFNHP) and UVM Medical Center Support Staff United (UVMMC SSU) were joined by members of Community Health United, UVM Staff United, and the Winooski Education Association to discuss the impacts initial cuts have already had on daily operations across UVM Health in Vermont and Northern New York, the administration’s lackluster response, and how community members can support frontline health care workers.
In June, UVM Health eliminated over 140 positions across its network, a third of which were union positions, according to AFT Vermont, which represents workers there. The cuts, which the hospital estimated will save $9.5 million, comes as the network faces a $300 million budget shortfall. Rules set by the Green Mountain Care Board, which regulates Vermont hospitals, will require UVM Health to cut expenses by that amount over the next three years.
Later that month, UVM Health handed down a speed-up order to its Medical Group, which includes outpatient clinics and more than 1,000 physicians, which practitioners say will result in briefer appointments with patients.
Owen Foster, the former Chair of the Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB) took aim at what he saw as the excesses of UVM Health in a board meeting last September. “It’s essentially an expensive and ineffective layer of overpriced and unnecessary corporate bureaucracy that has proven itself both physically and spiritually distant and unconnected from the mission of our flagship academic medical center and the needs of Vermonters,” Foster said.
Foster found that the surplus revenue earned by UVM Medical Center was being siphoned off by UVM Health to subsidize its hospitals in New York state that the network has been unable to manage profitably, to the tune of over $100 million over the past several years. He noted that at the same time that UVM Health was shutting down kidney dialysis services in St. Albans, Rutland, and Newport, it was moving $10 million from UVMMC to its New York hospitals. Some commentators have argued that Vermont ratepayers should not be directly or indirectly paying for New York hospitals, and that instead they should be operated within New York’s health care networks, which enjoy a much broader tax and revenue base than Vermont.
Chris Swiesz, a registered nurse and union member at UVM Health’s Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, spoke remotely. “We are sick of having to pay for management short-sightedness and poor planning. Instead of cutting the executive pay and administrative overhead costs, UVM Health is cutting frontline staff and services,” Wise said. “They are cutting the workers who make our healthcare facilities run.”
Multiple executives, many of whom had received a combined $3 million in bonuses in 2024, were laid off in October 2025 as part of a restructuring process. However, the most recent round of cuts, and likely future cuts, are aimed directly at the caregiver and support levels, leading to reductions in the quality of care for a majority of Vermonters.
“We know this is an incredibly hard economic time all around. Our folks are not immune from that in any way, shape, or form,” said Melissa Lavalle of UVMMC Support Staff United regarding the cuts and the need for safe staffing. “But hospital workers aren’t hospital workers because they want a fat paycheck. They care about the community and care about providing quality care to the community that we’re all part of, that our families are part of, that our friends are part of.”
While hospital administrators and the Green Mountain Care Board believe these cuts will help streamline operations, panelists said they will add to daily workloads across the board and exacerbate current issues within the system, which could lead to dire outcomes for patient care.
Panelists shared common themes of understaffing, overwhelmed workers and systems, turnover, and the hospital network’s lack of recruiting and retention power due to low wages and high costs of living. Workers report burnout and stress-related health issues due to insufficient staffing and resources needed to do their jobs successfully.
“Part of the issue as well with recruiting new staff or keeping new staff is that the work is just too hard. The patients are sicker, and we’re being asked to do too much,” said Jessica Jacobs of VFNHP, who works in the sleep center at UVM Medical Center.
“If we don’t get safe staffing, if that one load-bearing aspect of our contract is not fulfilled, people are going to die, and it is going to be people you know,” said Teagan Cook of UVMMC SSU. “We do not have the adequate staffing to sustain human life in our hospital anymore, and that has to change.”
Speakers asked community members to show up to union events to support health care workers. To those who regularly use medical care, they can utilize the health network’s Patient & Family Advocacy, the department that addresses patient concerns, and let them know that safe staffing is vital to their own personal care.
Other panelists, including those from Community Health United, the union for staff of Community Health Centers, NYSNA, UVM Staff United, and Winooski Education United, voiced their solidarity by sharing their own staffing and labor struggles. Educators connected the struggle at UVM Health with fights for equitable funding and staffing in public education, which is also under threat from budget cuts and rising healthcare costs.
Cross-movement solidarity is a hallmark of labor organizing in Vermont. By coming together across sectors and issue areas, workers have found the allies needed to win difficult fights. For example, UVMMC’s unions have urged the hospital to sign onto the Milk with Dignity Program, a purchasing agreement spearheaded by Migrant Justice to pay dairy workers a fairer wage. Union health care workers are often seen at the forefront of movements and campaigns across the state, from opposing ICE to supporting Palestine.
“Our work is caring for those in our community, and that connection is so powerful,” said Matt Gile of Winooski Education United.
The final bargaining session for UVM Medical Center Support Staff United is scheduled for today, July 28th.
Matt Moore is a writer from Vermont. He is on the editorial collective of The Rake Vermont.
