Butler Hospital’s unionized nurses, mental health workers and other staff are expected to walk off their jobs at 6 a.m. on Thursday, as temporary agency staff prepare to step in to keep the psychiatric hospital on Providence’s East Side running.
Butler Hospital will remain open and provide “safe, compassionate, and uninterrupted care” during the strike, Mary E. Marran, the hospital’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement to The Public’s Radio. The hospital will adjust visiting hours during the strike. (See details below.)
Butler spent $3.2 million to hire replacement staff through a temporary agency to keep the hospital operating during the strike, Marran said, “at a premium cost, escalating operational expenses.” The hospital paid the staffing agency $1.8 million on May 8, she said, and another $1.4 million on May 12.
Instead of paying for replacement workers, Care New England should be “investing in its own workforce,’’ Jesse Martin, executive vice president of SEIU1199 New England, said in a statement. “Lifting workers out of poverty is an investment in our communities, not paying for replacement workers.”
Butler’s starting wages include $18.27 an hour for mental health workers, $18.64 an hour for CNAs and $15.53 an hour for service & maintenance staff. That’s less than the $23.47 an hour that a single adult needs to earn to make ends meet, according to the Economic Progress Institute’s 2024 Standard of Need report. That standard for a two-parent family with two children is $25.75.
The SEIU1199 NE represents roughly 5,000 workers in Rhode Island, including more than 800 staff at Butler Hospital. The union’s contract with Butler expired on March 31.
In addition to calls for better wages and benefits, unionized hospital staff have been raising alarms about safety concerns, with staff reporting a sharp rise in injuries from patient assaults during the last two years.
Hospitals around Rhode Island have been struggling with national staffing shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Butler is advertising more than 100 full-time, part-time and per diem openings on its careers website as of Wednesday. Those unfilled positions are in addition to the replacement staff hired for the strike.
The union filed an unfair labor practices complaint on May 12 against Butler, which included allegations the hospital has engaged in illegal behavior, including “surveilling…threatening, coercing and retaliating against workers for protected union activity,’’ the union said in a statement. Butler has not yet been served with the complaint, Marren said.
Butler’s unionized workers voted last month to authorize a strike, saying the hospital’s operators at Care New England had refused to address their concerns about workplace safety and wages.
Care New England said in a statement last month that Butler proposed on April 15 to increase wages an average of 3.4% – 8.5% per year, with total wage increases of between 15.6% and 32% over the life of the proposed four-year contract.
Reports of patient assaults on Butler staff during the last two years jumped 40%, to 236 assaults in 2024, up from 168 assaults in 2022, according to hospital incident logs.
Mohammed Malki, a mental health worker at Butler, told The Providence Journal he suffered a brain bleed after being punched in the head by a patient in October 2023.
“Butler Hospital places the highest priority on employee and patient safety and is dedicated to continuous improvement in those areas,’’ Marran, Butler’s president, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, violence against healthcare workers is an increasing problem nationally and locally. Healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than employees in other industries.”
She called the trend “unacceptable,’’ and said Butler “has consistently taken a collaborative and multifaceted approach to improving employee safety.”
Butler has taken a number of steps, Marran said, to address the safety issues at the hospital, including creating the Health & Safety Committee to review assault and restraint incidents, and creating a Critical Incident Stress Management Team to support staff with the psychological impact of traumatic events.
“Butler complies with all Rhode Island hospital safety laws,” Marran said, “including 2022 health care safety legislation developed in part by union members.”
On Thursday, the SEIU1199 NE also planned to hold an informational picket outside Women & Infants Hospital, which is also operated by Care New England. The union said in a statement that the hospital’s operator was “making unilateral changes to working conditions” that violated their contract and was “putting workers at risk.”
Due to the job action, inpatient visiting hours at Butler Hospital will be temporarily reduced as follows: Visitors will be permitted daily from 5 p.m. to 5:45 p.m., and 5:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The hospital will continue its practice of no visiting hours in Delmonico 3.
