Union Contract Negotiations Stall for Residents and Fellows at Mass General Brigham

Residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham began federal mediation with the hospital system last week to settle their first union contract, reaching a deadlock after 13 months of negotiations.

MGB has offered Mass General Brigham Housestaff United a 2.5 percent raise upon ratification and two additional raises of 2.5 percent and 2.25 percent for the later years of the contract. But union officials say the offer does not adequately address inflation and the hospital system has refused to add fertility benefits and or increase meal stipends — both high priorities for the housestaff.

After two dozen bargaining sessions, MGB Housestaff United met with a federal mediator alongside MGB negotiators for the first time at a Jan. 15 bargaining session. They left the meeting without any substantive progress. Union officials say they are weighing escalatory action and have not ruled out a strike.

During the Jan. 15 session, residents discussed a potential work stoppage in front of MGB administrators, though third-year pathology resident and bargaining committee member Lee P. Richman said that the negotiations would have to become “truly egregious” for the union to make such a move.

“We’re still hopeful that MGB will come around and act in good faith, and that some of these other pressure tools will work,” Richman said.

“But that’s never off the table,” he added. “There is a sentiment that people would like to do it, that people are angry enough for it.”

The hospital system union — affiliated with the Service Employees International Union’s Committee for Interns and Residents — represents around 2,700 MGB residents and fellows that voted to unionize in June 2023. Biweekly bargaining sessions began in Dec. 2023, but have since stalled over wage increases, meal stipends, and fertility benefits.

Bargaining committee member and third-year neurology resident Alexander M. Cerjanic said he believes MGB officials are “stalling” on the central debate over wages and benefits.

“We bargain in their off hours to participate in these sessions only to be told, ‘Oh, well, we’ll have a response to the bargaining next time,’ on core economics,” he said.

Bargaining committee member and first-year internal medicine resident Madison A. Masters said that federal mediation did not expedite the bargaining process in last week’s session, where she said union leaders left without any progress on compensation.

“Even when we had the federal mediator this past week, they spent two hours of our time and hid behind the federal mediator and said ‘we have no other offers to offer you at all,’” she said. “They came back with one piece of minute wording on the particularities of how frequently they would run shuttle buses to the parking lot.”

MGB spokesperson Jessica V. Pastore wrote in a statement that “it is normal at this stage of the process for the parties to be at or close to their final position on the open issues and be more limited in their counters.”

“At the last session the union refused to engage with us on any issues if we did not further modify our wage proposal, which we had already communicated was very close to a final position,” Pastore wrote. “Through the mediator we tried very hard to encourage them to engage and they were very resistant.”

“We modified one of our counterproposals (on parking and transportation) and they ended the session declining to respond,” she added.

According to the union bargaining committee, MGB has gradually inched up from their initial 1.5 percent wage increase offer since bargaining began. The hospital system’s most recent offer — a 2.5 percent increase on base wages for year one — is still far below the 6 to 7 percent increases residents say are necessary to keep pace with inflation.

“A lot of us have loans to pay,” Masters said. “We live in the most expensive parts of Boston, near these hospitals, because we have to in order to be able to make it to work.”

But Pastore, the MGB spokesperson, said the trainees are already among the highest paid in the country. She pointed to trainee compensation increases including aggregate pay increases of 7.5 percent in 2022 and an additional 10 percent in 2023, as well as a $10,000 general stipend.

Those benefits, the union has long alleged, were part of a campaign by the hospital to dissuade residents from supporting the initial union effort in spring 2023.

In their first contract, residents hope to see economic provisions akin to those at Stanford and the University of California San Francisco. Both universities’ medical schools offer residents and fellows more than $20,000 to cover fertility treatments as well as meal plans for residents to use at in-hospital dining.

The union is also pushing for a fertility-preservation benefit for procedures such as egg freezing. They argue that female doctors are often forced to delay having children due to the stress of residency and say egg freezing allows them flexibility and reduces the risk of complications during pregnancy.

MGB also does not offer coverage for LGBTQ couples seeking in vitro fertilization unless they have been diagnosed with infertility, something bargaining committee members want the contract to address.

“My wife and I have been patients in Brigham’s IVF clinic with very low out-of-pocket copays and are happily expecting a baby this summer,” bargaining committee member and third-year internal medicine resident William J. H. Ford wrote in an emailed statement. “It’s a travesty that, in comparison, my colleagues in same-sex relationships are effectively barred from starting families due to the out of pocket cost of IVF.”

According to Pastore, MGB currently provides infertility benefits as part of their health insurance plans alongside a $10,000 stipend that she said the residents “can use for whatever personal expense they choose.”

The two sides have already agreed upon a $5000 annual stipend for board exams and study materials alongside access to rideshare programs for fatigued residents. Union members who take on research years during their residency — a requirement for certain specialities — will also be paid at the next postgraduate level upon returning to MGB.

Some of the agreed-upon stipends previously existed in some form, but were revoked by the hospital system in Sept. 2023. At the time, residents and fellows filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the benefits were removed in retaliation for unionizing.

Union organizers want to have a contract in place in advance of the rank order list deadline on March 5, when resident candidates submit their slates of preferred programs.

“I really would like to have this done so that this doesn’t affect how people make this huge decision of where to match,” Richman said.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.