Yesterday, the SHARE negotiating team met with the UMass Chan management negotiating team for the first session of 2025 contract negotiations.

A couple of hours before our meeting began, the Medical School sent out an email to the whole community about “Hiring and discretionary spending”. It said, among other things:

All hiring, including for faculty, grant-funded positions and summer internships, are paused until further notice. At the present time, only ForHealth Consulting is exempt from this pause.
Promotions and raises, including the annual July 1 salary increase program, are on hold.
Targeted furloughs and layoffs are, unfortunately, going to be necessary and are currently being discussed with the leaders of academic and administrative departments.
In addition, all new discretionary spending is paused until further notice. Discretionary spending includes, but is not limited to, the use of university funds for: conferences, consultants and contractors, travel, food and events, and memberships, dues and subscriptions.

This affects SHARE members and everybody else in the community. The SHARE negotiating team has requested that the management team bring in someone who can explain more about what this means for SHARE members, for discussion at one of our next negotiations meetings.

We know that many of you may have questions about the “Hiring and discretionary spending” email. Please get your questions to us this week, so that we can send our questions to the management team before we meet.

Email us at- Share.umms@TheShareUnion.Org

In solidarity,

The SHARE staff: Jameal Jackson, Jana Hollingsworth, A.J. Iaconi, Elisabeth Szanto