Unions mark ‘strike spring’ as wave of organizing reshapes Connecticut’s health care industry

CT Insider – Thursday, May 29, 2025
By Liese Klein

By the time the union members were finished, a map of the state of Connecticut was thickly speckled with stickers — each one representing a nursing home or group home that would be impacted by a major strike. The sticker exercise at a union rally at the state Capitol on May 19 highlighted the scope of a planned walkout.

If the strike had gone forward, seniors, disabled people and special-needs children at more than 240 locations from Greenwich to Thompson, from Stonington to Salisbury would have faced disruptions in their routines and new faces handling their basic needs.

“It will affect them tremendously,” said Latia Maldonado, a paraprofessional instructor at a school for students with disabilities in Plainville, at the rally. Her students, many of whom exhibit a range of challenging behaviors, would be forced to adjust to temporary caregivers hired to replace striking workers. “Our students, our clients, they don’t know them at all.”

The strike threatened by nearly 8,000 members of SEIU 1199NE was called off on Friday, with only four days to spare before the final deadline set by the union.

“A nursing home strike, which at its core separates caregivers from residents, is nothing short of harmful, traumatic and costly,” said Matthew Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities. “All parties who had a stake in this year’s strike threat, especially the nursing home residents and their caregivers, can rest easier tonight because of (Friday’s) announcement.”

Labor leaders mark a ‘strike spring’

Lawmakers and union leaders joined industry representatives in expressing relief at the deal, but the energy and scope of the planned nursing-home walkout may be a sign of things to come in Connecticut’s health care industry.

“Remember that this workforce, just five years ago, really went through hell with the pandemic,” said Rob Baril, president of SEIU 1199NE. Higher pay in the form of wage differentials helped ease the burden on front-line workers at the time, he added.

“Since then, those differentials have disappeared, and inflation really sort of put people through a wood chipper,” Baril said. “Those are the reasons why you see lots of health care workers organizing and in fights.”

The nursing home and group home workers joined Pratt & Whitney machinists, Electric Boat marine drafters and Backus Hospital nurses in public labor disputes in Connecticut in recent weeks, with Pratt workers approving a new contract Tuesday to end a three-week strike. A group of marine drafters at General Dynamics Electric Boat also approved a new contract on Tuesday, averting a strike at the submarine maker in Groton by nearly 2,000 workers.

The Backus Federation of Nurses union, affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, hosted an “informational picket” on May 15 to highlight its concerns about staffing at the Hartford HealthCare-owned hospital. The nurses have threatened to strike over issues including mandatory overtime and alleged union-busting activity by hospital managers.

“We remain committed to reaching a fair agreement for all parties involved,” Backus Hospital President Donna Handley said in a statement.

John Brady, vice president of AFT Connecticut, a registered nurse and a former president of the Backus Federation of Nurses, joined union leadership in declaring a “strike spring” in the Northeast. The ever-widening gap between top leadership and on-the-ground workers across industries is fueling labor organizing, he said.

“That divide is probably back to where it was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,” Brady said. Corporate leaders “don’t treat health care professionals like they’re a resource, they treat them like they’re an expense. People only put up with so much for so long, and then if they have the opportunity to do something about it, they will.”

The pickets and strike threats by Backus Hospital nurses echo an uptick in health care union activity nationally this year, including a 46-day strike by the Oregon Nurses Association involving 5,000 nurses and physicians at eight hospitals. That strike ended in February with a deal that included up to 42% wage increases for nurses over the life of the contract, and immediate wage hikes of up to 22% upon ratification of the contract.

Lingering burnout from the COVID-19 pandemic has collided with staffing cutbacks from health employers to mobilize nurses, Brady said. “They feel like they go home and they don’t feel like they’ve done the job that they trained to do,” he said. Higher rates of workplace violence in health care settings add to the stress, he added.

“These mega-corporations that own multiple hospitals, they just don’t seem to hear what the problem is or listen to it,” Brady said. “We’re working in our hospitals and our union hospitals to push back on that, and we will be successful eventually on that.”

Although nurses have been more visible on the picket lines in recent years in Connecticut, Brady said physicians are also turning to labor activity as more end up working as employees rather than in private practice.

“In the past year or two, physicians are the fastest-growing part of our union,” Brady said.

CT doctors push back on corporate moves

“We are seeing a pattern which is concerning and I also know that this is a systemic issue,” said Dr. Saud Anwar, a physician with Eastern Connecticut Health Network and deputy president pro tempore of the Connecticut State Senate. “The reason is that the health care systems are financially in trouble, too.”

Anwar, who spearheaded legislation several years ago to make it easier for doctors to unionize, said that recent actions by Trinity Health of New England highlight the challenges faced by the majority of Connecticut physicians who are employed by large health systems.

As part of a new partnership announced in April, Trinity shifted management of the system’s emergency medicine physicians and hospitalists to a California-based staffing company called Vituity.

“This collaboration strengthens our commitment to improving access and delivering high-quality, patient-centered care while ensuring the long-term sustainability of these essential services,” Trinity said in a statement.

Doctors at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury and Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford were told they would have to sign on with Vituity or lose their jobs, Anwar said, and about 30 have since left the system. Anwar held a press event in February to denounce Trinity’s move and said that more doctors are now considering unions.

Trinity declined to comment on Anwar’s statements regarding its partnership with Vituity.

Calling Trinity’s actions a “collective wake-up call on corporate heavy-handedness in the process,” Anwar said that Connecticut doctors have taken note. About 80% of physicians in the state are employed by health care systems or companies, a higher percentage than the national average of about 77.6%.

“I have no doubt in my mind that if the (Trinity) physicians, the hospitalists … if they were unionized, they would not have been treated as harshly as they were,” Anwar said.

Trainee doctors form unions in neighboring states

So far no Connecticut physicians have announced union efforts, but their colleagues just west of the state border in Valhalla, New York, have organized at Westchester Medical Center, rallying outside the hospital earlier this month for higher pay. About 400 doctors who work as part of residency and fellowship programs organized to join the CIR/SEIU union to boost their relatively low wages, which reflect their junior status.

“They have been at the bargaining table for about five months, and are being offered wage increases that barely keep up with inflation,” said Dr. Taylor Walker, president of the CIR/SEIU, the nation’s largest physicians’ union.

Representing about 40,000 residents and fellows across the country, CIR/SEIU has doubled in size in the last four years and is the fastest-growing union in the country in any industry, Walker said. As in other health-care professions, the COVID-19 pandemic helped spark labor organizing among trainee doctors, she said.

“Residents and fellows, who have graduated from medical school and are doing postdoc training in their specialties, are truly the front lines of patient care in terms of physicians,” Walker said. “I think the thing that’s keeping that momentum going is the corporatization and privatization of health care.”

Walker singled out the cost-cutting of private equity-linked health systems.

“The effect that that’s having is really to prioritize profits over patient care and over the health and well being of the employees who work at the hospital,” Walker said.

Recent wins for the union include ratification last week of a contract at Mass General Brigham for 2,600 staff physicians, the first ever such deal at the Boston hospital system.

Could Connecticut doctors be next?

Taylor said she wasn’t free to discuss labor organization efforts in the state at this point, but she’s confident of future action. “I don’t see this corporatization and privatization of health care slowing down anytime soon, so to that end, I don’t see physician unionization slowing down anytime soon, either.”

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