Vermont Workers Center
Mission Statement
The Vermont Workers’ Center is a democratic, member-run organization dedicated to organizing for workers’ rights and living wages for all Vermonters. We seek an economically just and democratic Vermont in which all residents have living wages, decent health care, childcare, housing and transportation. We work to build a democratic, diverse movement of working and low-income Vermonters that is locally focused and coordinated on a statewide basis. We work with organized labor in moving towards economic justice and in strengthening the right to organize. We are committed to taking action on the full range of issues of concern to working people, and to building alliances nationally and internationally.
Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals has had a long relationship with the Vermont Workers’ Center, and are proud of what we’ve accomplished with them. They were actively involved in our successful 2002 Union Yes! win. We’ve worked together on many legislative initiatives over the year, most notably Act 48, the Vermont Single Payer bill enacted in 2010. It was the Vermont Workers’ Center, our union and other AFT-VT unions that convinced then Senator Doug Racine in the fall of 2009 to take health care off the wall – again – and put it back on the table.
The next day, he announced publicly that he would be taking up health care reform in committee in January, 2010. All throughout this time, our members participated in Workers’ Center Peoples’ Forums around the state, forums that allowed people living in Vermont the opportunity to discuss with their elected leaders the issues that were important to them, and what they wanted to see happening in the statehouse. The amazing grassroots campaign that helped people, including our elected leaders, get to Act 48 is still running strong – the Health Care is a Human Right campaign, and we continue to work with them on the free health screening clinics: “Rosie on the Bus” and other campaigns with other social justice organizations.
FAQs
We are a strong union of health care professionals organized to ensure access to high-quality health care for everyone in the communities we serve.