GREENFIELD — After a year of contract negotiations, Baystate Health has reached a tentative agreement with the Baystate Franklin Medical Center nurses union, securing increased pay that aligns with what’s offered at other area hospitals, stable nurse-patient ratios, and increased staffing in the Emergency Department and mental health unit.
The previous contract between the hospital system and the nurses union expired in December 2025, and nurses continued working under monthly extensions while the two parties negotiated. Contract negotiations began on Sept. 10, 2025, and, according to Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) Bargaining Committee Co-Chair Marissa Potter, the last few sessions focused heavily on staffing levels.
“It’s about time,” said Potter, an obstetrics nurse at Baystate Franklin. “We did get [Baystate Health] to agree to an eighth nurse in the Emergency Department in the evening hours. … This is a huge win for Greenfield.”
Potter explained that the three-year contract, backdated to January 2026, was finalized on Monday and signed by Baystate Health and Bargaining Committee representatives. The full union membership will still need to vote to ratify the contract; the MNA said it will schedule the vote in the coming days.
“We have reached a tentative agreement and look forward to the bargaining unit members having the opportunity to take a ratification vote in the coming weeks,” Baystate Health spokesperson Heather Duggan said in an emailed statement.
Under the contract, Baystate Health agreed to add a nurse for the 3 to 11 p.m. shift in the Emergency Department and add a dedicated 12-hour admissions nurse in the mental health unit. Potter said this will allow nurses to provide more focused, efficient treatment.
“We are super enthusiastic,” Potter said.
Potter said other negotiation points that the parties had been trying to work out since April, when the union rejected Baystate’s “Last, Best and Final Offer,” centered around concerns over health insurance and back pay.
The contract includes an average pay increase of 6.2% for nurses in the first year, backdated to January, and a total 13% increase over the entire three-year contract.
By comparison, previous offers from Baystate Health included a $3 hourly raise for 2026. That increase would be followed by a 3% bump in 2027 and another 3.5% raise in 2028. The Bargaining Committee had continued to push for increased pay throughout the negotiations, citing pay disparity between different Baystate Health locations.
According to job postings listed on the Baystate Health website earlier this year, nurses at Baystate Franklin are hired with pay ranging from $37.98 to $62.87 an hour, while at other locations in Palmer, Ware and Springfield, registered nurse positions are listed with a range from $41.82 to $66.30 an hour.
“We didn’t get everything we asked for, but we got parity with all the other Baystate systems,” Potter said.
Throughout the year, other negotiating points that were addressed in the tentative contract include requiring Baystate Health to use union nurses rather than non-local “float” nurses and maintaining current nurse-patient ratios. The hospital also agreed to a $6-an-hour payment for on-call surgical nurses, up from $5 per hour.
Potter said one of the Bargaining Committee’s biggest points of pride was reaching an agreement without the union going on strike. Union members had voted 98% in April to authorize a one-to-three-day strike if bargaining sessions did not show progress toward reaching a finalized contract, and in a written statement, the MNA said the nurses union was on the verge of pursuing a 14-day strike.
“This is an enormous victory for patients, nurses and the Franklin County community,” Suzanne Love, a registered nurse at Baystate Franklin and co-chair of the MNA Bargaining Committee, said in a statement. “We stayed united and persisted over several months of a coordinated community campaign because our patients need safe staffing. In the end, Baystate moved toward us and we reached an agreement because nurses and our community supporters refused to give up.”
Potter said it was a lot of responsibility for her and the Bargaining Committee to advocate on behalf of the more than 200 nurses working in the Greenfield hospital, but representatives always focused on “keeping patients at the center” of their negotiations.
Community support was a huge help throughout negotiation efforts, Potter said. Over the past year, community members have written letters to Baystate Health executives and board members, participated in picketing sessions and spoken at Greenfield City Council meetings in favor of the city adopting a resolution supporting the nurses. In April, the council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution.
“The Greenfield community and the larger Franklin County community has supported us every step of the way,” Potter said. “We feel so appreciated and we feel so grateful.”
“I get teary-eyed thinking about this,” Love said in a video posted to the Baystate Franklin Medical Center nurses Instagram page. “This was a lot of work, and a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, and a lot of outside action and a lot of community support that got us to this.”
Potter said the contract will expire on Dec. 31, 2028, and negotiations for a 2029 contract will likely start up again in about a year and a half.
