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Updated May 7, 2025, at 3:59 p.m.
Residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham reached a tentative agreement on their first contract with the hospital system at a Tuesday bargaining session, marking the end of 18 months of negotiations with Massachusetts’ largest private employer.
The proposed contract — which runs from 2024 to 2027 — includes a 2.5 percent annual raise for the contract duration with retroactive pay to July 1, 2024, according to two bargaining committee members. The agreement also includes a $50,000 wellness budget and $5,000 in stipends for exam fees, according to public statements from the union.
The agreement comes after bargaining had previously stalled over economic provisions — including wage increases and fertility benefits. In January, MGB had offered the union a 2.5 percent raise on ratification and raises of 2.5 percent and 2.25 percent for the second and third years of the contract, respectively.
Since then, the hospital system upped its offer to 2.5 percent for all three years — still below residents’ and fellows’ prior request for a 6 to 7 percent annual raise, but greater than MGB’s initial offer of 1.5 percent.
MGB chief academic officer Paul Anderson, an HMS professor, wrote in a statement that the hospital system was “pleased” to have reached a tentative agreement and that MGB residents were already among the highest-paid in the United States.
“After 18 months and dozens of negotiation sessions, we look forward to focusing together on supporting our patients and their families, who remain at the center of all that we do,” Anderson wrote.
Third-year pathology resident and bargaining committee member Lee P. Richman called the raises and stipends “a life-changing amount of money.”
“Especially in this economy, when we fully expect most people won’t be getting cost-of-living raises every year, we’re going to be getting guaranteed raises, which is huge,” Richman said.
Residents were not able to obtain the fertility benefits — including funding for egg freezing and coverage for LGBTQ couples seeking in vitro fertilization who have not been diagnosed with infertility — but said that they would continue to advocate for them as the contract comes up for renegotiation.
MGB Housestaff United voted to unionize with the Council of Interns and Residents-Service Employees International Union in June 2023 and began negotiations that December.
The roughly 2,700-worker unit began negotiating with a federal mediator in January after reaching a deadlock in negotiations, but the final few sessions took place between just the union and the hospital system.
Union organizers said that the final push for an agreement came as part of a desire to finalize a contract before the new class of residents arrived at the hospital system.
“We were motivated to get this done before the new class comes in. So we thought long and hard and we decided we had to let some things go at the table,” Richman said, referring to the fertility benefits. “But we’re not letting it go permanently.”
The proposed contract comes as MGB — which has multiple hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School — weathers the impacts of increased uncertainty for healthcare funding and the University faces $2.2 billion in frozen federal funding. MGB CEO Anne Klibanski wrote in an email to employees last month that the impact on the hospital system “remains unknown,” but a Trump administration spokesperson said the freeze would not target hospitals.
Still, MGB could be affected by broader cuts to federal research funding, as well as proposals to sharply curb the budgets of major federal grant providers.
In February, MGB had already announced layoffs for administrative employees, citing financial strain.
The tentative agreement also comes amid a flurry of union activity at other Boston-area hospitals. Residents and fellows at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center unionized in January and have yet to begin negotiating their first contract. Resident physicians and fellows at Cambridge Health Alliance ratified a new contract in October.
The bargaining team will present the proposal to MGB Housestaff United’s full membership before a ratification vote is held between May 13 and May 22.
“It feels like a really nice capstone on my medicine residency experience, and something I’m looking forward to continue being involved in,” bargaining committee member William J.H. Ford said.
—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.
—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.
