About 50 members of the Professional Staff Union marched from their offices in the Quinn Administration Building through a Sept. 3 welcome week event in Campus Center to raise awareness about their ongoing contract negotiations.
Workers wearing green PSU T-shirts shouted call-and-response chants as they walked across the quad. Once inside campus center, they walked down the stairs to the upper level, stopping to give brief speeches and pass out leaflets to onlooking students.
The PSU’s contract expired 14 months ago, and the union is one of two that has not negotiated a new contract since then. Since September 2024, the university has settled contracts with the Classified Staff Union, Faculty Staff Union, Graduate Employee Organization and the three unions representing UMass Boston Police Department officers and dispatchers.
The Department Chair Union also remains in active negotiations, according to the university.
According to the university’s labor relations webpage, bargaining with PSU “is making steady progress.” PSU leaders said the negotiations have made little headway. PSU’s bargaining team has met with the university 32 times since June 2024, according to the university. CSU reached an agreement after 29 sessions. FSU negotiated a contract in 22 meetings.
“There’s no constructive bargaining happening at the table, and we’re having a hard time getting management to move forward on a lot of proposals that we put on the table,” said PSU contract action team member Alison Harper.
A UMass Boston spokesperson did not comment on the demonstration. “The university remains committed to concluding ongoing negotiations with the PSU for a successor agreement, as we have with most other campus bargaining units,” Director of Communications DeWayne Lehman wrote in a statement.
PSU leaders said the primary disagreement is based on the raise structure. The union is pushing for a stepped pay structure like the one used by classified staff, where new employees start at the bottom of their pay scale and receive a raise each year. “It would guarantee annual raises that are actually on par with cost of living increases,” she said.
The university wants a discretionary, merit-based system. Harper called that strategy inequitable. “Very dependent on the person’s supervisor,” she said.
PSU members currently receive an annual cost-of-living-adjustment raise determined by the governor as a percentage of their pay. Union President Tom McClennan said these increases do not typically keep up with the rate of inflation. “We get those percentage increases, but they are pay cuts because they don’t keep up with inflation and we don’t get step increases,” McClennan said.
“We’re asking to increase payroll consistently and regularly every year… They don’t want to see payroll balloon like that.” McClennan said. “They don’t want to pay employees. What they want to do is have contracts with third parties and they want to build buildings. They want to buy things, but they do not want to pay employees.”
McClennan said the lack of raises leads to turnover. If an employee is still making the entry-level rate after five years, he said, they can get a job elsewhere with pay that reflects the added experience. “And that’s what they do,” he said. “When we bring that up and say, ‘we hire new people, and then they leave in five years,’ the university says, ‘well, that’s fine. We don’t mind. That’s not a retention problem.’”
“But do you want a new advisor every two, three years as a student? I don’t think so,” McClennan said.
Despite the expired contract, state law prohibits government employees from going on strike or stopping work, according to the Department of Labor Relations. Their unions also may not condone or encourage members doing so.
