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Berkshire visiting nurses take steps to form union

Berkshire Medical Center, part of Berkshire Health Systems, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Adam Frenier
/
NEPR
Berkshire Medical Center, part of Berkshire Health Systems, in Pittsfield, Mass.

Employees of the Berkshire Visiting Nurse Association want to form a union. They filed a request Thursday with the National Labor Relations Board asking for an election.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association said the vast majority of the Berkshire VNA's 66 registered nurses and physical, occupational and speech therapists signed union cards. 

Registered nurse Sarah Roberts said, since the pandemic, patients are being discharged from hospitals and nursing homes sooner, and going home sicker. But she said she is required to see a certain number of patients a day, even if they need extra attention.

"More and more we feel that we are not being given time and that our patients are being kind of looked at as a number instead of a whole person," Roberts said.

Berkshire VNA is part of Berkshire Health Systems, which is declining to recognize the union voluntarily.

"Every employee should have a voice in deciding whether an outside third party will represent them," Michael Leary, BHS spokesperson, said. "BHS has not, and will not, recognize any labor union without first giving all of the affected employees the benefit of a free, fair, and confidential election, and an NLRB-supervised election is the best way to do that."

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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