You’d be for­giv­en for think­ing these fig­ures refer to the work­ing con­di­tions of West Vir­ginia teach­ers, or those in any of the red states that erupt­ed in strikes dur­ing this spring’s teacher rebel­lion. But, in fact, these fig­ures describe the dai­ly real­i­ties con­fronting nurs­es in none oth­er than the wide­ly-hailed pro­gres­sive state of Vermont.

On Thurs­day, 1,800 nurs­es and 300 health pro­fes­sion­als at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont Med­ical Cen­ter (UVMMC) began a two-day strike to demand more for them­selves and their patients. At the cen­ter of the strike are issues relat­ed to safe staffing, com­pet­i­tive pay and calls for a hos­pi­tal-wide $15 min­i­mum wage.

One of the cen­tral demands is for safe-staffing ratios, which the union rep­re­sent­ing the nurs­es, the Ver­mont Fed­er­a­tion of Nurs­es and Health Pro­fes­sion­als (VFNHP), sees as inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to work­ers’ pay. The hos­pi­tal ranks among the low­est for pay in a state that ranks 47th in the nation for nurs­es’ wages, adjust­ed for cost of liv­ing. The longest-serv­ing nurs­es at the hos­pi­tal have not received a pay increase in nine years.

The VFNHP reports that low wages con­tribute direct­ly to staffing issues because the hos­pi­tal can­not recruit and retain staff. The UVMMC, a lev­el one trau­ma cen­ter and the sec­ond largest employ­er in the state, rou­tine­ly has vacan­cies of between 130 and 180 posi­tions. To com­pen­sate for these short­ages, the hos­pi­tal spends exor­bi­tant sums of mon­ey to employ trav­el­ing nurs­es for 13-week stints. The union claims that in some cas­es the hos­pi­tal gives sched­ul­ing pref­er­ences to these trav­el­ing nurses.

In addi­tion to low wages, the UVMMC employs lean pro­duc­tion meth­ods that put both nurs­es and patients at risk. The union claims that the hos­pi­tal has fre­quent short­ages of sup­port staff, includ­ing nurs­es’ aides and order­lies. Accord­ing to Tristin Adie, a nurse prac­ti­tion­er and mem­ber of the bar­gain­ing com­mit­tee, nurs­es in the reha­bil­i­ta­tion unit rou­tine­ly do laun­dry for up to an hour a day, while nurs­es in the oncol­o­gy unit are con­sis­tent­ly tasked with billing and cod­ing duties, and nurs­es across the board are forced to reg­u­lar­ly clean rooms and accom­pa­ny patients to far off places in the build­ing. Adie says that such prac­tices direct­ly con­tribute to an unsafe work­ing envi­ron­ment: nurs­es can­not ade­quate­ly care for patients when they are forced to do the work of sup­port staff in addi­tion to their pri­ma­ry duties.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the UVMMC did not return a request for comment.

Strik­ing nurs­es say that UVMMC management’s cut­ting of cor­ners betrays the pri­or­i­ties of a hos­pi­tal man­age­ment more com­mit­ted to prof­its than patients. The non­prof­it hos­pi­tal expe­ri­enced finan­cial prob­lems after a for­mer CEO’s fraud scan­dal and the reces­sion, which it large­ly climbed out of by freez­ing wages in order to have more cash on hand, there­by increas­ing its bond rat­ing. Since then, UVMMC has under­gone a peri­od of rapid expan­sion — buy­ing out four hos­pi­tals and small­er clin­ics in New York and Ver­mont, and, in the process, becom­ing the sin­gle largest employ­er in the region.

UVMMC also has plans to begin con­struc­tion on a new build­ing for the Burling­ton hos­pi­tal that would cost $187.7 mil­lion but has not released any infor­ma­tion about how they plan to staff the new facil­i­ty. Mean­while, the hos­pi­tal pro­vides lav­ish salaries for its executives.

As Ver­mont Sen. Bernie Sanders not­ed in a July 6 press con­fer­ence in sup­port of the nurs­es, ​“I find it real­ly hard to believe that the hos­pi­tal has enough mon­ey to pay near­ly $11 mil­lion to 15 admin­is­tra­tors, includ­ing more than $2 mil­lion to the CEO (John Brum­st­ed), but appar­ent­ly doesn’t have enough mon­ey to pay their nurs­es the same wages as nurs­es earn just across the lake in Platts­burgh, where the cost of liv­ing is, in fact, low­er.” The hos­pi­tal is also no longer hurt­ing for cash: it’s total oper­at­ing bud­get is $1.2 bil­lion. Mean­while, UVMMC’s chief finan­cial offi­cer Todd Keat­ing dis­closed that the hos­pi­tal has more than 220 days of oper­at­ing cash on hand.

Core to the union’s demands is fair com­pen­sa­tion for work­ers whose labor has fueled the hospital’s new­ly acquired wealth and expan­sion. The union is ask­ing for a $15 min­i­mum wage for all ancil­lary hos­pi­tal staff, many of whom are not includ­ed in the bar­gain­ing con­tract. This expres­sion of work­er sol­i­dar­i­ty was sup­port­ed by the vast major­i­ty of union mem­bers, notes Adie. ​“We rec­og­nized that we have pow­er through our union that these peo­ple don’t have. Many of them are new Amer­i­cans, and many came here through refugee reset­tle­ment pro­grams. They are fear­ful of join­ing a union.”

The $15 min­i­mum wage was one plank in a broad­er strat­e­gy of deep inter­nal orga­niz­ing by the union that began over a year ago. Frus­trat­ed over pre­vi­ous con­ces­sion­ary con­tracts, the union began build­ing a net­work that would pro­vide the rank-and-file with the con­fi­dence to stick it out at the bar­gain­ing table and win key demands, includ­ing a 24 per­cent wage increase on par with the salaries of nurs­es at Cham­plain Val­ley Physician’s Hos­pi­tal in Platts­burgh, N.Y, which is also part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont Health Net­work. The VFNHP formed mem­ber action teams that put rank-and-file mem­bers in lead­er­ship posi­tions and enabled the union to achieve a 94 per­cent vote to approve the strike from its membership.

The nurs­es’ sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign also looked out­ward to labor and pro­gres­sive allies in the Burling­ton com­mu­ni­ty and beyond. The union made a point of reach­ing out to every oth­er union in the region, includ­ing the Burling­ton bus dri­vers’ and teach­ers’ unions, both of which have gone on strike in recent years.

A coali­tion of left groups includ­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Social­ist Orga­ni­za­tion, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca and the Ver­mont Work­ers Cen­ter formed the group ​“Alliance in Sup­port of UVMMC Nurs­es,” hold­ing edu­ca­tion­al events and a pick­et in sup­port of the strike. A new hash­tag and Face­book page, #Red­forMed, is tak­ing a cue from the sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign #Red­forEd in sup­port of the teacher’s strike in Ari­zona, encour­ag­ing sup­port­ers to post pho­tos of them­selves wear­ing red in sup­port of the strike. On the pick­et line, com­mu­ni­ty groups and nurs­es from the New York State Nurs­es Asso­ci­a­tion and Mass­a­chu­setts Nurs­es Asso­ci­a­tion will be join­ing the VFNHP.

UVMMC’s man­age­ment, on the oth­er hand, has been intran­si­gent. Late Wednes­day night, union mem­ber Phillip Macomb not­ed in a Face­book post that the union had offered a com­pro­mise in“the hopes of set­tling this con­tract and avert a work stop­page,” but that man­age­ment reject­ed the pro­pos­al and refused to nego­ti­ate. This refusal comes on the heels of a cam­paign of bul­ly­ing and intim­i­da­tion by man­age­ment through­out the bar­gain­ing process, accord­ing to strik­ing nurs­es. The union has filed a total of 21 unfair labor prac­tice charges against man­age­ment, includ­ing attempts to pre­vent union staffers from com­ing on site, tak­ing down union fliers, and refus­ing to seat key deci­sion mak­ers — hos­pi­tal exec­u­tives — at the bar­gain­ing table.

The strike, slat­ed to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant in the region in years, comes on the heels of the wave of recent teach­ers’ strikes in the Unit­ed States, as well as a mas­sive, ongo­ing strike involv­ing 30,000 nurs­es in New Zealand. Schol­ars have linked the labor activism of nurs­es and teach­ers, not only because they are both female-dom­i­nat­ed pro­fes­sions but also because of the strate­gies they use to organize.

In their book Car­ing for Amer­i­ca, Eileen Boris and Jen­nifer Klein refer to these strate­gies as ​“care work­er union­ism.” Boris and Klein argue that care work­er union­ism draws a straight line between work­ing con­di­tions and the broad­er social wel­fare sys­tem — health­care for nurs­es, pub­lic edu­ca­tion for teach­ers — which defines the con­di­tions of ​“care.” Care work­ers have thus had to advo­cate for larg­er social goods as part of their demands for expand­ed work­ers’ rights.

That is cer­tain­ly what we’re see­ing in Ver­mont, as nurs­es are strik­ing not only for a high­er salary and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions for them­selves, but for a com­mu­ni­ty hos­pi­tal that puts patients above prof­its, and that offers all work­ers dig­ni­ty and a liv­ing wage.

Nurs­es, like teach­ers, often face the sidelin­ing of their con­cerns as work­ers in favor of the para­mount needs of the recip­i­ents of their care. But what about the patients? is a com­mon hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion meant to dis­cred­it any strike or work dis­rup­tion among health­care providers. But Ver­mont nurs­es know that the two issues are not coun­ter­posed: if the care of patients is to be val­ued at all, the providers of that care must them­selves be val­ued and mate­ri­al­ly supported.