Bargaining Central 2024–2025

PSU Unit A jobs are assigned “grades,” which each have their own hiring range. For example, if you’re hired for a job graded 24 at UMass Amherst, your salary offer will be $41,865 at the low end and $62,798 at the high end, while jobs graded 30 have a range between $75,449 and $113,174. Those are big ranges! And to make things more confusing, Amherst and Boston both have totally different grades within salary ranges.

When you’re hired at a set salary within a range, you have no way to increase your pay without changing your role to one at a higher job grade—or leaving UMass. Even if the hiring scale says that the maximum for your position is $62,798, if you’re hired at $50k, you’re stuck there. Your pay will increase a tiny bit based on the governor’s parameters for Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs)—maybe 3% annually, if we’re lucky—but those increases often don’t keep up with inflation. 

Without the ability to get raises and with COLAs not keeping up with inflation, PSU members who stay in their roles lose purchasing power and essentially make less money every year. Why would anyone want to stay in their role, no matter how essential it is to the university? Internal promotions and leaving UMass are the only ways for members to increase their economic security. As one manager quipped to a PSU member, you have to “go to grow.”

Many other public sector professional staff unions (like the National Association of Government Employees and the MASSDOT) in Massachusetts guarantee steps as a solution to this stagnation. 

How would PSU’s proposed step system work? Each pay grade would have its minimum to maximum salaries divided up into the course of 10 steps. Your salary would automatically jump to the next step on your employment anniversary. If you were hired into a pay grade at $60k (currently grade 25 for UMA and 28 for UMB), you would be making at least $63k after one year, at least $66k after two years, and after 10 years, you would get to the top step in your pay scale, which is currently set at $87k for this pay grade. All the steps on the scale, including the top step, would be adjusted upwards by the governor’s COLA parameters over time. This is what other professional staff unions in Massachusetts get that we don’t—both COLA raises and step raises.

And $60k would be the new minimum pay grade anyone could be hired at. We seek to eliminate the lowest rung of the pay grades and increase the minimum salary for every pay grade. $60k has been identified as the minimum living wage in Massachusetts. Our employees deserve it. 

We also seek to: 

• Put UMass Amherst and Boston onto a single wage scale (eliminating their arbitrary differences).
• Add further longevity bonuses for employees who have been here for many years.
• Add bonuses for employees who get new degrees, like a master’s or PhD, while working at UMass.

We have adjusted these proposals to fit into the governor’s current parameters for the public sector. These are cost-effective solutions that will save UMass money in the long run by increasing employee retention, preventing excessive job training and failed searches, and generate a sense of value and belonging that will buoy the quality of work that every employee produces.

Every single employee will get a raise, and no one will be paid less than $60k. Every employee who stays with the university will eventually earn the maximum of their pay grade without having to change roles. 

If our proposal is accepted, you will receive back pay as if you had received your 3% COLA in January 2025, and you will be placed on the new step scale (further bumping your salary) starting from July 2025.

One full-time job will be enough to pay your bills, and you will get more economic security every year instead of losing purchasing power.