Eighteen months after residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham voted to unionize, about 400 doctors in training protested outside the health system's flagship hospitals Thursday and accused their employer of bargaining in bad faith as the union seeks its first contract. Shouting "shame" and "union power," members of the Committee of Interns and Residents, or CIR, of the Service Employees International Union said MGB has offered raises that fail to keep pace with inflation. Meanwhile, they said, Dr. Anne Klibanski, MGB's president and chief executive officer, earned $6 million in the fiscal year that ended in September 2023, a nearly 12 percent jump over the previous year. Dr. Chris Schenck, a second-year resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and member of the union's bargaining committee, said he sold his plasma to a blood bank for $100 at least half a dozen times last year to help pay his bills. He earned $88,000 in 2023 while working 65-hour weeks, he said. "We chose this work. We love our patients. We love doing this. But frankly it's hard to make ends meet," said Schenck, 26, who lives with his girlfriend in a $3,500-a-month rented apartment in Watertown and is paying off more than $150,000 in loans from medical school and college. Another member of the union's negotiating committee, Dr. Madison Masters, said that after about 20 bargaining sessions, hospital leaders have offered a raise of 2.25 percent for the first year of a contract, less than the rate of inflation. MGB spokesperson Jessica Pastore said the health system is "committed to bargaining in good faith" and that "we have the highest respect for our trainees and value the many contributions they make in the care of our patients." She said the system has actually offered a 2.5% raise in the first year of a contract but that the proposed increases in the following two years would be 2.25%. The union is seeking a raise of almost 20% over three years, retroactive to July 2023, according to Pastore.
