For the past three months, pedestrians on the tree-lined walking path on Providence’s Blackstone Boulevard could look across the street and see Butler Hospital’s striking workers marching up and down the picket line.
The hospital’s approximately 720 members of SEIU 1199NE who walked off the job on May 15 are going back to work, after 99% of participating members voted Monday night to approve a new four-year contract with their employer and the hospital’s owner, Care New England (CNE).
“I will enjoy being back inside,” Dan Camp, a Butler employee, said in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “But I gotta say, I got a nice tan while I was out there.”
The tentative agreement between the union, SEIU 1199NE, and Care New England, the psychiatric facility’s owner, was announced Sunday evening. It replaces the four contracts that expired in March and covered unionized nurses, social workers, technicians, environmental service staff and clerical workers.
A complete copy of the contract was not immediately available Tuesday, but among the highlights are:
- A $20-an-hour wage floor for workers across the unionized groups, which is guaranteed for all workers by the end of the four-year deal. Full-time workers will see their pay increase by at least $6,000 in the first year.
- Health benefits will remain intact, and the hospital agrees to control costs for its Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
- Retirement and pension benefits are preserved.
- Concerns about worker safety amid an increasing amount of violence from patients crystallized into a jointly funded “time bank” that will provide financial support to employees injured on the job, ensuring they can supplement workers’ compensation without losing income.
Union members said the strike, purported to be the longest hospital labor action in state history, dragged on because the hospital’s offers left the lowest-paid employees — including dietary and clerical staff — earning about $18 an hour. That figure would not suffice for a livable wage in Rhode Island, the union argued, and worker solidarity kept employees of all pay grades on the picket line.
For employees like Camp, who now works in the call center of the psychiatric facility but started in one of the lowest-paid departments, dietary services, the deal represents equity.
“That’s always been a priority to make sure that from top to bottom, everyone gets what they need,” Camp said.
During the walkout, Care New England shuttered three units at Butler, cutting the psychiatric hospital’s operations to roughly half of its 197-bed capacity.
Courtney Threats, a social worker and a member of the bargaining committee, said the union will soon meet with hospital leadership to discuss a phased return to work. She said workers want to “get back sooner rather than later, so that we can resume caring for our patients who we’ve missed and we’re eager to return to.”
A week ago, Threats spoke to the media in what turned out to be the final union press conference and noted that bargaining sessions the week before had fizzled once more, even with federal mediators present. On its website two days later, the hospital stated that union leaders were mischaracterizing events and ultimately misleading the press and the public.
What changed in seven days?
The protracted labor dispute was resolved in part because of Rhode Island House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, said Threats.
Asked if Shekarchi had tipped the scales in favor of the union, Threats said, “Absolutely, absolutely.”
The speaker’s spokesperson, Larry Berman, said in an email Tuesday that Shekarchi personally convened both sides’ leaders after negotiations continued to collapse, hosting bargaining sessions in his State House office and other locations.
“Sometimes in tough negotiations, an outside voice helps bring the parties together,” Shekarchi said in a statement. “Rhode Island’s health care system needs Butler Hospital to be fully operational. Under the agreement, patients will again be able to access all the mental health care services offered at Butler, frontline workers will earn better compensation, the hospital will have more predictability, and there will be increased collaboration on workplace safety. Everyone wins moving forward!”
One accusation leveled by Care New England leadership, including its CEO Michael Wagner, was that union leadership puppeteered the strike and made it longer than it needed to be.
Threats had a different interpretation of union leaders.
“They taught us a lot about ourselves,” Threats said. “When we walked out on May 15, we were colleagues, many of us not knowing one another. And when we return, we’re returning as a family.”
Butler’s costs compromised Care New England’s gains
The union may be emerging from the strike stronger than before, but the hospital — which comprises 10 acres, 37 buildings, and 578,300 square feet — helped incur a $4.4 million loss because of temporary staffing costs used to keep Butler operating during the labor stoppage.
That reverses more positive news for Care New England’s finances from earlier this year — specifically, its bonds issued through the quasi-public Rhode Island Health and Educational Building Corporation, which are backed by the hospital system’s revenues — a common arrangement for nonprofit hospitals that cannot trade publicly on the stock market.
Everyone wins moving forward!
On May 5, just 10 days before the Butler strike began, Fitch’s Ratings upgraded Care New England’s bonds and noted the company’s tighter control of costs, improved revenue, and a slim but improving operating margin. After years of losses, CNE’s balance sheet looked positive, Fitch’s stated.
The strike toppled these projections, according to the third-quarter finance report recently issued by Care New England for the nine-month period ending June 30. CNE’s top line grew during this time, and by the end of June, the company had collected $63.7 million in patient service revenue, an increase of 7.1% compared to the previous year. Other revenue sources climbed about 16% from the year prior, a total increase of $25.6 million.
The expense side of the ledger was less encouraging. Spending on Butler replacement staff contributed to the health system’s overall operating costs ballooning to $95.1 million, a 9% increase year-over-year.
“It should also be noted that prior to the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, Care New England had generated eight consecutive quarters of generating positive operating income,” the report reads.
As for contract negotiations, Care New England is not done with those either. More than 4,500 employees are union members across its properties. According to the third quarter report, two more unionized workforces — including the SEIU-represented visiting nurses association — had contracts expire earlier this year, with negotiations still underway as of the third quarter report. There are also three new contracts being forged with the Committee on Interns and Residents in multiple Care New England facilities.
The two largest unions with Care New England are currently covered. At Women & Infants Hospital, SEIU workers who were briefly enlisted in the Butler scuffle in July are covered through May 2027 by a contract created last year. Kent Hospital has 1,400 nurses and professionals under a contract set to expire in 2029, though wages and outsourcing can be renegotiated in 2026.
Loose threads from Blackstone Boulevard
Accolades for the strikes’ resolution arrived quickly. Gov. Dan McKee’s praise came in a Monday night email issued alongside AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley, one of the state’s top union leaders.
Rhode Island’s entire U.S. congressional delegation — Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, and Reps. Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo — issued a joint statement Tuesday applauding the contract, while simultaneously jabbing at President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The deal reached this week respects the heroic work that the nurses, mental health professionals, and staff at Butler Hospital do each day for Rhode Island patients in the dangerous environment of looming Republican Medicaid and Medicare cuts,” the delegates wrote.
Meanwhile, state labor regulators are still unwinding the legal saga sparked during the strike. Department of Labor and Training spokesperson Edwine Paul confirmed Tuesday that a lockout case in the Rhode Island Supreme Court tied to the strike has automatically entered the appeals process, as both parties appealed. Paul said the Board of Review will examine the case next, after which point either party can decide to continue the appeals.
As for the now-defunct picket line on Blackstone Boulevard, Providence mayoral spokesperson Josh Estrella said the total municipal costs associated with the strike were $398,266, which includes a police detail that had a constant presence alongside strikers, waving motorists in and out of the long driveway leading up to the Butler campus.
Now Blackstone Boulevard will be a little quieter with the strikers gone. But not that much quieter: Noise violations issued early in the strike, with six as of mid-June, stopped as the strike lingered on.
“There were no additional noise violations issued at this location,” Estrella said.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
