As you may be aware, UMass Chan Medical School announced and implemented parking rate increases both last year and this year. SHARE understands the financial burden this puts on our members, and we have met with Labor Relations on several occasions to discuss these increases and make proposals for less costly alternatives. So far, UMass Chan leadership has been unwilling to agree to these alternatives.

We wanted to provide SHARE members with more details about these negotiations and proposals presented by SHARE.

A Sliding Scale

The Medical School referenced the cost of parking is at “peer institutions,” which included Worcester Garages like The Mercantile Center, Worcester Commons and Union Station. They also included Yale, UConn, Boston University Medical Campus, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center among many others.
SHARE Researched parking rates at what we saw as peer institutions, such as Yale, UConn and UMass Memorial (for non union employees) which all use a sliding scale, based on income. The less someone makes, the less they pay for parking. We recently added other institutions to this list: WPI, UMass Amherst, Assumption and Holy Cross with parking rates based on income, or no cost at all for employees.
On July 17th 2024, SHARE met with Labor Relations and John Lindstedt, the Executive Vice Chancellor of Finance for UMass Chan. SHARE staff and Executive Board members were able to voice their concerns about continued increases to parking rates, and ask many questions. SHARE proposed a sliding scale to UMass Chan, which was ultimately denied, for a second year in a row.

While UMass did not agree to the changes we proposed, we did notice a decrease in the rates this year and next year compared to the projected rate chart we received last year. They told us, “The University expects to reach the target rates in FY27. The target rates are based on an FY22 market and initially modeled to FY26 with set CPI increases. We delayed increasing the rates one year due to NERB construction, which pushed the model out to FY27. Please note the rates are subject to change and we will update the union accordingly with any revised rates.”

SHARE has heard, through our monthly member meetings, and from directly speaking with members that these increases significantly affect their finances. As always, SHARE will continue to look for feedback and support from our SHARE members as we push for a parking system that is financially reasonable.

If you have any questions regarding the parking increases, please feel free to reach out to us anytime at SHARE.UMMS@TheShareUnion.org