For eight long months, 235 frontline technical professionals at Butler Memorial Hospital have been negotiating with hospital owner Independence Health for a first contract grounded in what should be their shared priorities: safe staffing to ensure high-quality patient care, and the recruitment, retention, and respect necessary to support the work they do – a healing mission for the Butler community. But while the techs are fighting for patient-centric care, Independence is fighting them. Independence has repeatedly violated federal labor law and undermined good-faith negotiations throughout the techs’ bargaining campaign, forcing them to file a raft of Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT HAS:
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Engaged in retaliation and coercive tactics, including promising raises in an attempt to discourage unionization—and then withholding annual raises after workers unionized. Also, telling workers they are not allowed to discuss their union or wages with coworkers.
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Refused to provide essential bargaining information, including membership lists, seniority data, and employee experience records needed for meaningful negotiations.
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Made unilateral changes without bargaining, such as spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on unsustainable sign-on bonuses instead of investing in retaining experienced staff.
While the Butler techs work day in and day out, dangerously short-staffed, on behalf of the Butler patient community, Independence is, day in and day out, working against the very people the system relies on to provide excellent care.
OUR INFORMATIONAL PICKET
The techs sounded the alarm with an informational picket on March 18th – a move Independence Health called “a stunt” in a public statement.
“Respiratory Therapists put people on machines to help them breathe,” says Respiratory Therapist Monica Johnson, a 13-year veteran of Butler Memorial. “Our department has always been depleted and always runs very, very short. And because we have done it for so long, they just expect us to do it. If I’m in the ICU, I can potentially have the whole floor, which is 24 beds. If I’m on the floor, I can potentially have 63 people. It’s nothing to have 10 BiPAPs [Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure machines] on a floor, to have 9 or 10 vents running. That’s a lot to monitor. We can’t keep people because people can’t keep up with the work.
“I changed my speech after the email we received from the hospital yesterday, which claimed that ‘the Union is unhappy that BMH is not ceding to all its demands,’” said Dylan Douthette, LPN, who works at Butler Memorial Hospital’s “faster care” facility. “I want to address some undisputed facts: The Union has participated in 13 all-day bargaining sessions with the hospital since August. We delivered an economic proposal on 12/09/25; the hospital didn’t respond until 02/09/26.
We are trying to get the hospital to address significant pay disparities by creating an experience-based wage scale, and during bargaining, we received responses from hospital lawyers like, ‘We don't feel it's necessary at this time to fix that.’”
“We are genuinely trying to save jobs, retain employees, and better serve our patient community,” said Douthette.
“This situation isn’t about ceding to demands. It’s not a stunt. It’s about ensuring fairness in the workplace. We all have pride in our professions and want our facility to be the best hospital for our community to go to.”
-Dylan Douthette, LPN
From "The Butler Eagle"
“When I first started at Butler,” said Johnson, who served as the emcee during the picket, “I felt that the respiratory department was top tier. Not that we aren’t top tier now—it’s just that we have no employees. I want to get back to better staffing, for our team and for our patients. I spoke with my boss’s upper management and had meetings with my boss’s upper management, and nothing changed. I find the fact that [the hospital doesn’t] want to communicate what’s going on, and they don’t want to work with us at all, very frightening. That’s why we are fighting so hard for a seat at the table.”