Nurses in 1199 of the Service Employees International Association and BMC management have been negotiating a new contract for more than six months with no success. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a Level I trauma center,\u201d said Allison Chase, a post-anesthesia care unit nurse at BMC. \u201cWe should be paid like the other Level I trauma centers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BMC fight \u2014 which includes nurses at the hospital\u2019s main campus and the BMC-affiliated Brockton Behavioral Health Center \u2014 is the latest in a wave of nursing strikes and other labor actions at major hospitals in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
Experts say the clash is a reflection of a fractured health care system suffering under the weight of enormous financial stressors. <\/p>\n
BMC, in particular, is expected to bear an outsize hit from federal changes to Medicaid eligibility that take effect in January, which will likely increase the number of uninsured patients at the Boston hospital. Roughly 40 percent of BMC\u2019s patients are on Medicaid, the government insurer for poor and disabled people. <\/p>\n
BMC is hardly on steady footing as it is, having posted significant operating losses earlier this year.<\/p>\n
In a statement, BMC said its contract proposal is informed by the financial reality of being a safety-net hospital that is reimbursed at lower rates than hospitals with greater numbers of patients with commercial insurance. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur offer appropriately balances our commitment to valuing our nurses, supporting retention and recruitment, and maintaining the financial stability necessary to serve our patients and community,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n
Chase, 36, said nurse turnover is a major issue at the hospital. She started at BMC 14 years ago with about 40 other newly graduated nurses, but is one of only a few left. She would consider leaving, too, if things don\u2019t change. <\/p>\n
She makes about $130,000 per year. At nearby Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, where nurses went on strike earlier this summer, mid-level nurses earn a base pay of $147,000, while nurses with two decades of experience earn at least $220,000 annually. <\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like hospitals have this way of talking to us with this insincere, patronizing altruism. They email us and say, \u2018you\u2019re heroes,\u2019 or \u2018we couldn\u2019t do it without you,\u2019\u201d Chase said. \u201cBut then won\u2019t show us the respect we deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
BMC proposed increasing wages by 15 to 20 percent over the next two years through seniority-based increases, annual pay hikes, and a ratification bonus, a hospital spokesperson said. The hospital also agreed to return to the bargaining table after two years, instead of three, to \u201cprovide flexibility to respond to changes in the financial and reimbursement environment,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n
Under the proposal, BMC\u2019s most tenured nurses would receive an increase of 11 percent over the next four months, the spokesperson said, for a total salary of more than $194,000 per year for a nurse working 36 hours per week. A first-year staff nurse would make $41.59 per hour, about a 9 percent increase from current wages, under the proposal. <\/p>\n
A union spokesperson said the nurses\u2019 wage proposal differs from BMC\u2019s by about 17 percent. Moreover, the spokesperson said BMC\u2019s proposal would increase nurses\u2019 health insurance costs, lacks paid training opportunities, and includes already guaranteed pay increases based on experience.<\/p>\n
BMC nurses currently start at $38.05 per hour, compared to $41.71 at the Brigham and $43.01 at Tufts Medical Center, according to the union. For a nurse starting at BMC working 36 hours per week, that amounts to a salary of about $71,000. Nurses with the most seniority earn $93.65 per hour at BMC, compared to $105.62 at the Brigham.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re tired of traveling nurses being brought in from out of state and paid more to do the same job, because management won\u2019t invest in BMC\u2019s own workforce,\u201d said Kerry LaBarbera, an emergency room registered nurse at BMC.<\/p>\n
Over 70 percent of nurses at BMC have been on the job six years or less, the union said. <\/p>\n
Throughout the industry, nurses, resident doctors, and other clinicians have been pushing for higher pay throughout the summer, amid Massachusetts\u2019 ever-increasing costs of living. <\/p>\n
In July, more than 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital walked off the job for a one-day strike that was the largest in Massachusetts history. They were locked out of the Brigham, one of Mass General Brigham\u2019s two flagship hospitals, for an additional four days. <\/p>\n
The hospital has yet to reach an agreement with the nurses represented by another union, the Massachusetts Nurses Association.<\/p>\n
Around the same time, nurses at UMass Memorial Medical Center\u2019s University Campus in Worcester authorized a 14-day strike over what they called chronic staffing shortages. The union, which has not gone on strike, is seeking more competitive wages to recruit and retain staff. <\/p>\n
Tom Juravich, a professor of labor studies and sociology at UMass Amherst, said the three strike authorization votes since June by unionized nurses, including the vote at BMC, were unsurprising given national and local dynamics.<\/p>\n
In the past decade, he said, the labor movement has experienced a national resurgence. Workers in health care, a dominant industry in Boston, have in particular flexed their muscles.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoston is a union town, and this is a highly organized industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And that industry is also in turmoil, with BMC particularly troubled. In May, it reported operating losses of $41.7 million for the first six months of its fiscal year, worse than the $30.4 million in losses for the same period the year before. <\/p>\n
BMC attributed much of the losses to its acquisition of two hospitals ravaged by underinvestment that were formerly owned by Steward Health Care, the for-profit hospital system that declared bankruptcy in 2024. <\/p>\n
The hospital will now have to contend with the public image of spending money on the Steward properties while saying there\u2019s not much left for its nurses, Juravich said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all love our nurses,\u201d said Juravich. \u201cPatients and families want excellent medical care, and they want nurses to be paid well enough and treated well enough so they can provide that.\u201d<\/p>\n
David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group, a Boston management consulting firm, said he looked back 10 years and couldn\u2019t find another time when multiple nursing locals have authorized strikes in such a short period.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s certainly unusual,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Williams added that the one-day strike at the Brigham this summer that turned into a multiday lockout presented a \u201ccautionary tale\u201d for nursing unions. <\/p>\n
\u201cA strike authorization vote gives the unions leverage at the negotiating table without risking a lockout and lost wages,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Just because the BMC nurses voted to authorize a strike doesn\u2019t guarantee one will happen. By law, health care unions must notify hospitals of a strike at least 10 days in advance to allow the facilities time to minimize interruptions to patient care. <\/p>\n
The BMC union has taken particular issue with how much the health system\u2019s C-suite executives are paid when nurses say their wages aren\u2019t keeping up with other Boston hospitals.<\/p>\n
BMC chief executive Dr. Alastair Bell made $2.2 million in total compensation in 2024, a nearly 13 percent increase from a year prior, according to the organization\u2019s most recent annual IRS filings. Even so, Bell is the lowest-paid leader of the state\u2019s major health systems. <\/p>\n
Marin Wolf can be reached at marin.wolf@globe.com<\/a>. Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nurses in 1199 of the Service Employees International Association and BMC management have been negotiating a new contract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-845087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}