Registered nurses at UMass Memorial Medical Center’s University Campus, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, voted yesterday by 96 percent to ratify a new three-year contract that includes significant improvements to the hospital’s nurse staffing and nurse workload and working conditions, along with across-the-board wage increases and full retroactive pay.
The agreement comes after months of determined organizing by the nearly 1,800 UMass University nurses, who repeatedly took collective action to demand that UMass Memorial Health address chronic staffing problems, workplace safety, and the hospital’s ability to recruit and retain experienced nurses.
Throughout their campaign, the nurses made clear that improving conditions for nurses was inseparable from improving conditions for their patients. They organized an informational picket in March, delivered a petition signed by more than 80% of the bargaining unit in June, and ultimately voted by 99% to authorize a 14-day strike if hospital executives continued to refuse to make progress at the bargaining table.
Patient Safety and Nurse Staffing
That sustained pressure produced an agreement containing concrete staffing improvements the nurses had fought to achieve.
Among them is the creation of six new full-time nursing positions, with an additional full-time position to be added in June 2027. Placement of the new full-time nurses will be determined by the hospital’s existing staffing committee, which will be expanded to include three additional nurse representatives selected by the union and up to three additional representatives selected by the hospital.
The hospital also committed to staffing units sufficiently at night so that nurses have no more than five patients, with an additional agreement that medical-surgical resource RNs on nights will initially work without a patient assignment and will ultimately have no more than 3 patients.
In addition, the contract adds an Acute Care STAT RN on weekends from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., strengthens on-call language, and establishes limits on how soon newly hired nurses can be assigned resource and preceptor responsibilities. Resource RNs work as unit-wide supporters, and preceptor RNs function as new-nurse educators/trainers … assignments that should not be given to new nurses who themselves are still learning and in training.
The agreement also includes protections for permanent union nurses when the hospital decides to reduce nurse staffing. If a shift is canceled, traveler nurses will be canceled before permanent MNA nurses employed by UMass University.
The union also won improvements to differentials for nurses working on-call shifts, night shifts, and as resource nurses.
Economics
The agreement provides across-the-board wage increases of 3.25% effective April 2025, 3% in April 2026, and 3% in April 2027. Nurses will receive full retroactive pay dating to April 6, 2025.
The contract also creates a new top step on the wage scale, effective in October 2027, providing a 2.5% increase over the previous top step, followed by an additional 0.65% increase to Step 18 in April 2028.
The agreement follows a highly visible campaign by UMass nurses that steadily escalated as negotiations stalled, with insufficient progress on nurses’ core concerns.
On March 26, nurses gathered for an informational picket to draw public attention to staffing, safety, and retention problems at the hospital. In June, nurses delivered a petition signed by more than 80% of their bargaining unit calling on hospital executives to address those concerns and reach a fair agreement.
When those actions failed to produce enough progress, nurses took their campaign a significant step further. On July 1, 99% of participating nurses voted to authorize a 14-day strike, demonstrating their willingness to take extraordinary collective action to protect their patients, their profession, and the future of nursing at UMass University.
“The staffing improvements and other protections in this agreement are here because our members refused to give up,” said Margaret McLoughlin, RN and union co-chair. “We kept showing up, kept speaking out, and kept standing together. It took a lot of work to get here, but we knew these changes were important for our patients and for our fellow nurses.”
“We are incredibly proud of what UMass University nurses accomplished,” said Ellen Smith, RN and co-chair. “We knew what our patients and our colleagues needed, and we were willing to fight for it. From our picket and our petition to our overwhelming strike vote, nurses stood together every step of the way.”
The nurses’ new three-year bargaining agreement runs through April of 2028.
