We are happy to announce that we have a tentative agreement with UMass Memorial. The agreement would extend our current contract until September 30, 2012, with:
- A Raise for all SHARE members for this year
- The creation of a labor-management Pension Committee
- No other changes in the contract
Details coming in the mail:
We will be sending every SHARE member a letter with the details of the agreement, a list of information meetings, and locations and times to vote on the proposed contract extension. If a majority of the SHARE members voting vote “Yes”, then the agreement goes into effect.
The Raise:
The letter you get will explain the raise in detail, show the new ranges, and allow you to figure out exactly what you would get. There are two parts to the raise: an across-the-board base increase that moves everyone in SHARE up along with their grade, plus a step increase/bonus for everyone hired before 10/1/2011. The step increase gives SHARE members credit for another year of service, and moves them closer to their grade max. The bonus is for any part of the step increase that would be over max. The bonus would be based on the number of hours paid in 2011, including overtime.
In order to get a big enough raise, we would agree to have it go into effect January 1 instead of October 1. In effect, we would trade part of the retro we are owed for a bigger base increase.
The Pension Committee:
One of UMass Memorial’s big priorities is to reduce the cost of benefits. As part of this effort, the management negotiating team made a proposal about making changes to the pension. The SHARE negotiating team could not negotiate about anything that important without a great deal of research and discussion. And we didn't want SHARE members to have to wait that long for a raise. So we made an agreement that would set up a "Joint Pension Reform Committee" to look at the pension, its cost and future sustainability, management’s proposed changes and what effect they would have, and other options.
The committee’s job would be to make a recommendation to the SHARE and management negotiating teams in time for them to negotiate about the pension in our next contract. No changes to the pension would be made in this current extension. Any changes to the pension that might be made in the future would not affect any pension benefit you have already earned.
Questions:
We hope to answer everyone’s questions soon in the letter we send to home, in information meetings, and in one-to-one conversations. Please be patient as we get this information out. We will be in touch soon.
Thank you,
The SHARE Negotiating Team:
Sandy Alafberg
Rob Beatty
Bill Brennan
Sheldon Brown
Rita Caputo
Deb Clark
Kirk Davis
Deb Engvall
Kathy Girouard
Carol Hehir
Jana Hollingsworth
Taylor Morgan
Deb Pawlina
Sharon Pichierri
Joan Powlics
Elisabeth Szanto
Alana Wesson