SHARE-UMass Memorial Medical Center
Tentative Contract Agreement
October 1, 2022—September 30, 2026
Our SHARE Negotiating Team reached a tentative agreement with UMass Memorial Medical Center and Medical Group. The next step is for SHARE members to understand what’s in the agreement, and to decide what they think about it. The tentative contract takes effect if a majority of voting SHARE members vote “Yes” on November 14-17th.
Raises
6% or $1.25 /hour, whichever is greater for each SHARE member, for Year 1 (retroactive to 10/30/22, not 10/1/22 -- see below)
5% or $1.25 /hour, whichever is greater for each SHARE member, for Year 2 (effective 10/1/23)
4.5% or $1.00 /hour, whichever is greater for each SHARE member, for Year 3 (effective 9/29/24)
4% or $1.00 /hour, whichever is greater for each SHARE member, Year 4 (effective 9/28/25)
SHARE members must be on the payroll in a job in the SHARE Medical Center unit (which includes some Medical Group and UMMH employees) on the date of ratification (November 17, 2022) to get the raise.
We Traded Retro for a Better Raise
Our contract expired on September 30th, so usually our raises come on October 1st each year. When negotiations go past the October 1st date, there may be a retroactive amount, to pay SHARE members as if the raise had gone into effect on time. This year, we went a month over the contract expiration date. (Sometimes it has taken much longer.)
The SHARE Negotiating Team traded the month of October’s retro to get a bigger raise sooner in the first year. The full 6% starts on October 30th – a bigger raise than we could have gotten on October 1st. Since we were only talking about a month’s retro, and because SHARE members are usually frustrated by the high rate of taxes on a retro check, the negotiating team used the opportunity to invest more in base pay. SHARE members get more money in their pocket for the year this way.
Since the raise won’t be delivered until after the contract is ratified, there will be a few weeks of retro back to October 30th.
Raises to Base Pay for SHARE Members Who Are Close to Max Cap of their Grade
The max caps for all grades will go up each year, so that every SHARE member gets a raise to their base pay. They will get the full amount, but some of it will be as a cash bonus.
If the raise would increase your rate higher than the max cap of your grade, then your new rate is the max cap rate. Any amount greater than max cap is paid as a bonus. The bonus rate is the amount of your raise over max cap, multiplied for every hour you worked in the prior fiscal year, including overtime.
The max caps will increase as follows:
Year 2: Max caps go up 3.2%. A SHARE member whose pay is already at max cap will get a raise to base pay of 3.2% plus a bonus of 1.8%.
Year 3: Max caps go up 2.7%. A SHARE member whose pay is already at max cap will get a raise to base pay of 2.7% plus a bonus of 1.8%.
Year 4: Max caps go up 2.2%. A SHARE member whose pay is already at max cap will get a raise to base pay of 2.2% plus a bonus of 1.8%.
If it were up to SHARE, everyone would always get the full raise to base. However, management thinks that every job should have a max. Over the years, we have arrived at a compromise.
Here’s how it works: Every SHARE grade has platforms, and we negotiate so that every raise moves SHARE members up one platform toward the grade max cap to give credit for their additional year of experience. (Before the union, lots of people never got to the max in their grade.) The amount of the raise that moves SHARE members up a platform toward the grade max is about 1.8% (amounts vary slightly by grade). The amount of the raise that could be considered a “step” to move SHARE members up to max cap will be delivered as a bonus to those SHARE members who are already at max cap. The bonuses are counted toward your pension.
On-Call Pay Differential
The on-call pay differential increases from $3.00/hour to $4.00 on October 30, 2022, and from $4.00/hour to $5.00/hour in year 2.
Pay Rates for Job Titles that Are Too Low
Both SHARE and UMass Memorial agree that some job titles may get paid less than nearby employers for the same job even after these raises. SHARE and the hospital have agreed that these negotiations won’t resolve all questions about job classification and compensation. SHARE proposed and agreed to continue to meet to discuss “problems of retention, recruitment, and market competitiveness and decide appropriate next steps.” That’s not a guarantee that we will be able to fix the pay rates for every title, but at least we can talk to management about what the problem is and advocate for why it needs to get solved.
Good News: Stability in Health Insurance and Pension
The hospital did not propose any cuts to our health insurance benefits or our defined benefit pension or 401K match. For the next 4 years, SHARE members will pay only 15% of the cost of the HMO plan (though the cost of our 15% does go up each year), and the cost of co-pays will not increase. Your defined benefits plan won’t change – that’s the pension that the hospital provides, and you don’t have to pay into at all.
SHARE proposed and UMass Memorial also agreed that if UMass Memorial redesigns our existing benefits, SHARE will be involved in the discussions about any changes. With SHARE members’ voice in the room, changes are more likely to meet the needs of SHARE members and their families.
Career Training and Advancement
SHARE put a high priority on increasing SHARE members’ ability to learn and grow in their careers at UMass Memorial in these contract negotiations. The SHARE survey showed that SHARE members want to learn and grow, but face barriers to doing so, like the cost, time and knowing where to find information about career paths.
Tuition Assistance Increasing
SHARE and UMass Memorial discussed increasing the tuition reimbursement amounts. SHARE wants the hospital to reimburse up to $5250 per year (the IRS limit) and to reimburse 100% of costs, not just a portion. We also discussed expanding what qualifies for reimbursement to include a SHARE member’s student loan repayment, and certification programs in addition to college credit classes. These discussions went well, but the final agreement must be approved by senior leadership before we can publicize it. We’ll keep you posted.
Building Career Pathways: The Work Continues
After this contract is completed, SHARE remains very committed to making career growth easier for SHARE members. UMass Memorial is putting a big emphasis on this work too, and is prioritizing workforce development plans for the whole of UMass Memorial. We all understand that when staff have clear opportunities to move up and learn new things, they will be more inclined to come to work here and to stay working here. That is good for the staff and for the hospital. SHARE and UMass Memorial have signed an agreement describing how we will work together on these goals going forward.
The Careers side table learned about training programs from labor-management examples at hospitals around the country. We are excited to work on:
Supports and flexibility to make it easier for SHARE members to work and go to school at the same time, even if they are raising kids.
Internal career pathways for high-demand positions, potentially including radiology techs, respiratory therapists and RNs.
External career pipelines to recruit to fill positions we need.
Expanding Unit Based Teams –
Having a Say in the Day-to-Day Work
Unit Based Teams are SHARE’s effort to improve how it feels to come to work. UBTs operate at the department level to involve SHARE members as respected partners in improving how the work gets done. SHARE Organizers and senior managers both support each team, but SHARE and the hospital must agree on how many new teams we launch each year, and on the money to pay UBT Coaches to support the teams.
The contract outlines a plan for 25 new UBTs each year, with a new coach to support 25 teams each time we expand. In the past we’ve had to adjust our plans to allow staff to focus on the Epic implementation and the COVID surges, but it’s important to have a default plan in place.
Smaller Changes
Leaves of Absence: Tidying Up the Options
Now that we have the Massachusetts Paid Family Medical Leave, which is the law, two leaves of absence that were in the SHARE contract are not needed anymore. They both applied to employees with 6 to 12 months service who were not eligible for the federally mandated FMLA. The Personal Medical Leave was available to new employees hired after 2017; the “Company FMLA” was available to staff hired before 2017. Now PFML is available to employees from day one on their job, so the old leaves are not needed anymore.
The SHARE Negotiating Team side table on leaves of absence and absenteeism worked hard to understand all the ins and outs of the different leaves, which are incredibly complicated. We wanted to ensure that SHARE Members are not losing anything substantial by eliminating these two leaves of absence. Hopefully, this change will make leaves of absence a little simpler for everyone.
Bridging of Service for Re-hired SHARE Members
“Bridging” is the term we use when a SHARE member leaves and then gets re-hired within three years. SHARE negotiated bridging years ago so that someone who comes back doesn’t start over again for earned time accrual rates and seniority. The problem was that bridged re-hires were brought back at their old pay rate, even if the pay grids moved up while they were gone. This made it hard to convince people to come back – and we all know that we need to fill as many positions as possible right now! We agreed to change it so that re-hires can potentially come back at the higher rates, depending on whether they have gained more experience by working in the field while they were gone.
Unresolved, but Agreements to Keep Talking
Despite many conversations, there were two issues we weren’t able to reach agreement on during negotiations but that the SHARE and UMass Memorial agree to keep talking about.
Promotion Increase
We agree to meet and discuss how we handle promotional increases and market adjustments for group and individual adjustments. SHARE is trying to change how the current contract language works.
Work from Home (“Remote Work”)
While the hospital created a policy making Work from Home permanent, SHARE and the hospital are still talking about Work from Home policy for SHARE members. Key issues for immediate negotiation include: which states caregivers may work from and/or be hired from, retroactive reimbursement for caregivers who were sent home starting in March 2020, and standards for temporary interruption to work from home capabilities. SHARE and UMass Memorial have agreed that we need to focus attention on this issue as soon as contract negotiations are finished.
Our 4-year contract expires on September 30, 2026. We will start negotiating the next contract before that.
The Full Contract Language
This is a summary of the most important changes. If you want to read the actual contract language, keep your eyes open for an email with a link to the full contract language. At this moment, we are still ironing out some details with management, but we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready to see.
Questions?
Watch your email for details about SHARE Information Meetings to answer any questions. We will also develop tools to make it easy to calculate how the pay increases will affect your individual pay rate in each year. In the meantime, you can reach out to your SHARE Organizer or SHARE Rep, or email share.comment@theshareunion.org.
