Hundreds of Butler Hospital staff hold informational picket to demand an end to workplace violence driven by short staffing and low wages

"It feels like we’re about to make a difference in the lives of the employees at Butler Hospital, not just now, but for generations and decades to come. It’s going to be great. We’re excited."

Hundreds of frontline Butler Hospital staff who are members of SEIU 1199NE¹ held an informational picket outside the hospital, calling for an end to the workplace violence epidemic driven by short staffing and wages that do not keep pace with other mental health providers in the state.

• In a recent survey, 95% of Butler caregivers said Care New England is not doing enough to keep them safe at work.

• From 2022 to 2024, there has been a 41% increase in patient assaults on staff.

• In the first three months of 2025 alone, there have been an additional 111 assaults.

• There has been a 79% increase in overall workplace injuries in the same time; and,

• Patient assaults on workers that required medical attention increased fourfold from 2021 to 2024.

“Staff members and the union at Butler Hospital are doing an informational picket to inform the public and the community that we’re bargaining for a new contract with Butler Hospital and Care New England,” said Dawn Williams, a nurse at Butler Hospital. “We’re here to make life-saving differences in our contract and the lives of our members. The excitement of the picket and the passing cars feels like a movement. It doesn’t feel like it’s just a contract we’re trying to win. It feels like we’re about to make a difference in the lives of the employees at Butler Hospital, not just now, but for generations and decades to come. It’s going to be great. We’re excited.”

“What does that future look like?” I asked.

“Hopefully, it will look like not having members living in poverty,” said Williams. “Hopefully, we don’t have members living in public housing and getting food stamps. Hopefully, it means people have security, a retirement, and affordable health insurance. We should be able to have these things because, as we care for the community of Providence, we need to be able to care for ourselves.”

SEIU 1199NE members at Butler Hospital began bargaining with Care New England last month to settle a fair union contract that provides competitive rates to recruit and retain urgently needed staff to meet the ongoing mental, behavioral and substance abuse health crisis in Rhode Island as well as paid training, increased job safety measures and improved benefits.

“We’re out here for a lot of reasons,” said Dan Camp to reporters during the picket. Camp works in Butler Hospital’s Behavioral Health Call Intake. “One of the biggest is that the hospital has left us behind. We need to get our wages to an appropriate level. We have members who are struggling to feed their families and living in cars, and those people have to come in and help other people. When people are struggling, it reduces the quality of our service. We’re out here to get everyone to a better place and get everyone where they need to be, so we can start working on a lot of the issues that have been building up over the last few years.

“We’re dealing with record numbers of assaults in the hospital, and we have proposals. We are focused on working with management to solve these issues. We need to ensure that we can be safe in our workplace. People shouldn’t be afraid to go to work. Part of what we want out of this is appropriate pay and lower staff turnover, which has been affecting the quality of care. Consistency is an important part of psych care.

“We have specific demands about safety and wages. All our demands are meant to address problems we face as a workforce and help us provide quality care for our patients.”

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“We want to work with Butler Hospital and Care New England,” said Dawn Williams, “and so far they haven’t even acknowledged that these problems exist. We need them to at least acknowledge the problems before we can solve them, so we’re back to picketing.

“Butler Hospital made $3.4 million in profits in the first quarter of 2025. We’re not making unreasonable demands. They have the money to do it, and we are just asking for dignity and respect.”

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Butler Hospital has 116 open positions (up from 108 just last month). Wages do not adequately compensate staff for the demands of the job; a high degree of burnout and emotional exhaustion drives staff to less stressful positions elsewhere. In a recent survey, 60% of Butler workers say they have struggled to afford food and housing. The median price of a single-family home in Rhode Island in October 2024 rose 11.5% from a year earlier to $485,000.

“As everybody knows, this hospital’s wage proposals do not even get to a starting wage for most of our members, so they would still qualify for food stamps in the State of Rhode Island,” said Jesse Martin, Executive Vice-President of SEIU1199 New England, addressing the picketers. “That’s wrong. Care New England needs to do better. For over a decade, our members at this hospital have sacrificed to ensure that Care New England is successful. When times were tough, we worked and made sure this hospital survived.

“I want to read something to you that came from one of our 1199 siblings in Care New England, a member who used the Butler Hospital services that save lives every day:

“On October 7th, 2008, my husband was admitted to Butler for suicidal thoughts and a major nervous breakdown. We went to Butler Hospital in an ambulance instead of the planned limousine ride to take us to the airport for a birthday celebration in Paris. Instead, we celebrated with the staff at Butler Hospital and with my family on the locked unit. He was in that unit for eight days. I’ve never forgotten those dark days in my family’s life, but I am very grateful, fortunate, and appreciative of the group of angels who took care of him and brought him back to his normal, stable mental health. The work they do is priceless. We owe his life to the Butler staff. I know if it wasn’t for them and the care he got, he would not be here today.”

“Rhode Islanders deserve a Butler Hospital that can continue that care into the future,” said Martin. “We are out here to ensure that we can survive at home and that our patients can survive because without Butler Hospital and our dedicated members who’ve spent their lives caring for them, this entire state’s mental health and behavioral health system falls apart.”

Since the pandemic, a surging demand for mental and substance abuse services has pushed the system to a breaking point. Depression among adults in the United States tripled in early 20208 - and worsened into 2021, impacting 1 in every 3 Americans. More Rhode Islanders died of accidental drug overdoses in 2021 than in any other year on record. In 2020, more than one in four (28.7%) Rhode Island children ages three to 17 had a mental, emotional, or behavioral health challenge. More than half (59%) of Rhode Island children ages three to 17 who needed mental health treatment or counseling had a problem obtaining needed care in 2022.

1. District 1199 SEIU New England represents 29,000 health care and service workers in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Southeastern Massachusetts. In Rhode Island, 1199 SEIU NE represents nearly 5,000 members. 1199 SEIU NE is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - a union of over 2 million members across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. SEIU has been a national leader in pushing the growing Fight for $15 and a Union movement.