SHARE Union Dues at Marlborough Hospital
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. When do I start to pay dues?
A. SHARE will give you information about membership and dues during your new employee orientation. It usually takes a few weeks for membership cards to get processed, before you can see the dues being deducted from your paycheck. Dues begin once your card gets processed and are not retroactive to your date of hire.
Q. How much are SHARE Union dues?
If you work more than 20 hours, dues are $11.57/week.
If you work 12-20 hours, dues are $8.66/week.
If you work less than 12 hours on the books or are per diem, dues are $5.83/week.
Q. How do I pay my dues?
A. You sign a membership card authorizing dues to be deducted from your paycheck, and they come out each week. If you don’t get any pay in a week, you don’t pay any dues.
Q. Do dues go up?
A. Yes, dues go up a little bit each January. The dues rates are set by our parent union, AFSCME, which is a national union with over a million members. The dues increase is based on the average increase in pay among AFSCME members. SHARE charges the lowest dues allowable by AFSCME. We find out how much they are going up in December each year.
Q. What do SHARE Union dues pay for?
A. Mostly they pay for the SHARE Union organizer staff who work with your group. They also go toward rent and phones for the SHARE office in Worcester. A portion of dues goes to AFSCME, our parent union.
Q. Do I have to be a member?
You have a choice about whether to be a dues-paying SHARE member. You don’t have to be a member; you can be an “agency fee payer” instead. Agency fee payers don’t get all of the benefits that members do, but they do get representation and contractual benefits. To learn more about your rights, please contact share.newmembers@theshareunion.org
Agency fee-payers are actively choosing not to join or participate. (For example, some religions do not allow their members to join other organizations.) Most people choose to be members of SHARE. Members can participate in internal union activities like voting on contracts and voting for, or running for, leadership positions in the union.