As many of you already know, SHARE began bargaining for our next contract in March. We knew going in that UMass Chan was facing huge financial challenges due to the loss of grant funding, which led to the furloughs and layoffs of a few SHARE members and of many other employees, so far.
Over the last several months, we have connected with our members through one-on-one calls and member meetings. We brainstormed options together which wouldn’t necessarily contribute to the financial difficulties the Med School was facing but would still mean something to SHARE members. Some of these included:
Increasing SHARE Members’ time off
·Thinking of ways to offset costs for rising health insurance
·Discussing the scheduled parking increases
Cashing out PTO time
On June 25th, UMass Chan announced raises of 2.5% for non-union employees. This is great news for SHARE members, since it indicates that unions will also be able to receive a raise this year. Because of this news, SHARE has shifted focus in negotiations to securing a meaningful raise for our members, while not abandoning the many ideas we have thought about over the last few months.
Historically, SHARE has always negotiated a substantial raise that didn’t only rely on the percentage increase, but instead provided a minimum amount, or “floor.” This floor gives many of our members more than what the percentage would result in. We understand that SHARE members are among the lowest paid at UMass Chan, and a raise like 2024’s 2% would only mean .50 cents for our member making $25.00 an hour. However, a floor like last years of .75 cents equated to 3% for that member making $25.00. These creative ideas around raises are what we are working on now, and beginning to talk about in negotiations with representatives from UMass Chan.
In our most recent member meeting, on July 23rd, we discussed the financial situation as noted above and received feedback from many who attended.
Members are concerned about maintaining the current Merit Bonuses and were happy to hear that SHARE intends to continue pushing to keep some sort of Merit Bonus in the next contract.
As our annual raise date has already passed, SHARE members are concerned about losing a portion of their raise due to the timing of the contract. SHARE reassured that we would continue to push for the raises to be implemented retroactively, to ensure everyone is “made whole” as we have consistently done in the past.
We discussed our traditional raise model, which includes a floor. We talked about how our members make much less than non-union staff, and that 2.5% is very little for most SHARE members. We explained that this floor provides a substantial raise for those making less money and that this is something we have always negotiated for.
During the meeting, the topic of a new pay structure, which would involve “step raises” on SHARE members’ anniversaries was talked about. As part our last contract negotiations, we made an agreement to discuss a new pay structure with Labor Relations which would involve these kinds of raises. At this time, we are pushing to make progress on this pay structure, but we are unsure if this could be included in this upcoming contract, given the financial constraints on UMass Chan.
As negotiations continue, we will pass along any information we can via, phone calls, blog updates, and continue to hold member meetings to keep everyone up to date.