Porter Medical Center is many things. It’s a hospital, where we come in our most vulnerable moments. It’s a system of medical care, where we turn to our doctors when we need answers. It’s a home where the elderly and the sickest of our community can seek refuge when they have no other safe haven. Porter is a center of care at the heart of our community that keeps it healthy.

So what is at the heart of Porter? Part of Porter are the doctors and nurses. As wonderful as they are, the vast majority of Porter is an unacknowledged powerhouse behind the curtain, the 300+ recently unionized technical and support staff that keep Porter running.

We provide a home for the growing population of aging patients needing around-the-clock care in our nursing home. We clean up to 1,000 pounds of linen a day for your beds and exam tables, and we keep every part of the building clean and disinfected. We make and deliver the food you eat. We assist the surgeons performing emergency cesareans or repairing dangerous fractures. We collect and test the blood that your doctor depends on for the diagnosis of conditions such as heart attack or infection. We answer the phone or check you in, so that you can get the care you need. If you are suffering from a life-threatening condition such as a stroke, we are the people performing the imaging that diagnoses it.

And we are struggling. We do not feel seen, or cared for by the institution that we give so much to. This April, by an overwhelming majority, we, the technical and support staff of Porter, chose to unionize so that together, our collective calls for change might be loud enough to hear. The reasons for us coming together this way are very clear:

• 65% of us make less than $23.33 per hour, Addison County’s living wage according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, while 47% of us don’t even make $20 per hour. These low wages mean we struggle to make ends meet:
• 49% of respondents to our union survey said they have a hard time paying their rent or mortgage.
• 51% cited difficulty with other debt or loans.
• 53% said they are challenged to afford enough food.

These are powerful statistics, and behind them are faces you have probably seen:

• Kendra Powers is a full-time radiologic technologist, and a single mother to two young children. Currently, the average cost of childcare for two young children in Vermont is over $26,000 a year. Rental rates within a 30-minute drive of Porter are 38-51% of Kendra’s take home pay, without utilities.
• Flynn Shepard is a fulltime patient care assistant. In order to be able to afford rent, the only “real food” that they eat is what they get from the Porter cafeteria; at home it’s ramen noodles.

UVMHN emphasizes that we are one network instead of individual hospitals, yet, at UVMMC, support staff are paid almost 20% more while techs are paid nearly 90% more than at Porter. Why is staff at Porter worth so much less to the network?

More hurtful still, from 2020 through 2023, PMC spent over $18 million on 256 travelers. The lowest paid traveler in that time made $45 per hour, 50% more than the average wage for techs and over twice the average support staff wage. Why are our shoulders, heavy from serving this community loyally for years, sometimes decades, so much less valuable?

Another priority for our union is safe staffing to improve patient and resident care. Helen Porter staff have shared powerful stories:

• Memory Care LPN Megan Burrows described having to distribute meds to 20 residents in an hour, on the verge of collapse after being forced to work 12- hour shifts three days in a row.
• Post Acute Care LPN Kathy Supernault spoke of the danger of rushing through critical tasks like wound-care and delivering meds because current staffing ratios don’t take into account patient acuity.

These concerns impact staff, patients, and residents who call Helen Porter their home. Porter is renowned for high quality beginning-of-life care; in a rapidly aging state, wouldn’t it behoove us to be just as renowned for high quality end-of-life care?

We are Porter; we are central to this beautiful, rural community in Vermont, a vestige of empathy and decency to many of us that live here. Across the country, rural medicine is disappearing, withering away under the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing modern healthcare. We want Porter to be a success story. We want to prove that a community that cares and provides for those serving in its most essential roles can survive, and thrive, and in doing so, keep our community healthy.

Paige Kernan, Pediatrics Office Representative

Maya Schnell, Radiologic Technologist