Last Thursday and Friday, the most frequent sight in scenic Burlington, Vermont, was not the usual horde of summer tourists vacationing by the shore of Lake Champlain. Instead, it was 1,800 nurses striking against their employer and the largest hospital in the region, the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVM-MC), over issues affecting thousands of patients.

During their two-day walkout to protest stalled contract negotiations, members of the AFT-affiliated Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (VFNHP) donned red T-shirts and massed by the hundreds, at two midday rallies and on picket lines, that were greeted with enthusiastic honking by local motorists. On Friday night, they paraded, about 1,500 strong, down the hill from the UVM campus, through residential neighborhoods and Burlington’s business district, ending up at City Hall Park.

It was the first strike by the nurses since they originally got organized sixteen years ago and constituted one of the largest work stoppages in recent Vermont history. And it definitely benefited from an outpouring of community support, reflected in the scores of red yard signs displayed by residents of Burlington and neighboring communities which called for a fair contract, safe staffing levels, and putting “patients before profits.”