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Nurses at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Foxborough campus sent a letter on Friday asking DFCI to eliminate their pay disparity with Mass General Brigham nurses working in the same building.
Under DFCI’s most recent pay offer, nurses working at the campus would make 20 percent less than their Mass General Brigham counterparts. They are already paid less than DFCI nurses based in Boston.
“The work is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also hard, and we really just finally agreed, we need to advocate for ourselves and have equal pay for equal work,” Catherine Hume, who has worked as a nurse at Dana-Farber for 17 years, said. Hume first started working at the Foxborough campus when it opened in August 2022.
“Truthfully, even way back then, we had several meetings about how we were paid lower than our Boston colleagues,” Hume said, referencing her time at the Milford campus, noting that the pay discrepancy seems to have increased over the years.
In response to the letter, a spokesperson for DFCI wrote in a statement to The Crimson that DFCI “has been actively negotiating, in good faith, with the Foxborough bargaining unit and the MNA to create the first contract with our Foxborough nurses.”
Pay discrepancies between the main Boston campus for hospital systems like Dana-Farber are not uncommon. In 2024, nurses at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner regional campus also unionized and voted to strike after reporting a nearly 10 percent difference in pay with the main Boston campus.
The Foxborough nurses are currently in the midst of their first contract negotiation, ongoing since May, after voting to join the Massachusetts Nurses’ Association last December. Their benefits package is the last step before an agreement can be finalized, but Hume said the DFCI’s current proposal is not a feasible option for the nurses.
In addition to the disparity with MGB nurses, nurses at the Foxborough campus are also paid less than their DFCI counterparts at the main Boston campus in Longwood.
“The work we do is no less complex, no less demanding, and no less critical to health outcomes than that provided in Boston,” the nurses wrote in the letter to DFCI.
According to Hume, the lower pay has historically been justified by citing the nurses’ lack of commute into Boston, which is considered an expensive city to commute in because of the excess traffic and high parking rates.
“I always felt like that was a very weak excuse, because there are no other industries that actually pay their employees different based on where they live,” Hume said.
“Where we live and where we work are all choices,” Hume said. “There have been some other indications that they feel that the work in Boston is more specialized, but actually, in a way, it’s kind of the opposite as far as nursing goes.”
Nurses at regional campuses like Foxborough, which have fewer staff, require knowledge for a broader array of treatment plans across disease groups, while Boston campus nurses are generally assigned to a single diagnosis, she pointed out.
The Foxborough nurses also highlighted that they face “higher nurse-to-patient ratios” and “remain subject to the same policies, safety standards, education requirements, and oncology certifications as their Boston colleagues.”
Nicole McGuire, an infusion nurse at the Foxborough campus, also said that location should not matter to pay, noting that some of her co-workers commute from over an hour away.
“I’m seeing every year I’m getting less and less money as I gain more and more experience, just because of inflation,” McGuire added.
The nurses wrote that the discrepancy “devalues their professionalism,” and would threaten DFCI’s “ability to recruit and retain skilled oncology nurses at a time when demand for our expertise is greater than ever.”
The letter comes after DFCI split with MGB over cancer care and struck a new partnership with another one of Boston’s major hospital chains, Beth Israel Deaconess, that will see them hire 700 new nurses within the next three years as they build a new Boston hospital and expand into other areas of Eastern Massachusetts. To do that, negotiating Foxborough nurses said DFCI will need to establish a more competitive wage.
“Every nurse at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute plays a vital role in providing exceptional patient care. We share a common mission: to reduce the burden of cancer,” DFCI wrote.
“We’re all doing this because we love our jobs, we love our patients. We want to be here long term, and we just need to be paid fairly so that we can.” McGuire said.
—Staff writer Stephanie Dragoi can be reached at stephanie.dragoi@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Thamini Vijeyasingam can be reached at thamini.vijeyasingam@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @vijeyasingam.
