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Boston public health workers urge council to fix pay scale after five-year contract lapse
Summary
Nurses, nurse practitioners and community health workers from the Boston Public Health Commission pressed the City Council’s Ways and Means Committee to approve higher wages and a new contract after the union has been without a ratified agreement since February 2020, citing staffing shortages and program disruptions.
Dozens of Boston Public Health Commission employees testified at a Ways and Means public hearing on May 28, urging the City Council to increase wages and fund a contract the union says has been stalled since February 2020.
The staff said low pay has caused high turnover and long hiring delays that threaten core services including the Healthy Baby/Healthy Child home visits, school-based health centers and communicable-disease programs.
“We’ve been without a union contract since 02/2020,” said Emily Wilcox Gonzalez, a public health nurse and union member, adding that vacancies are taking “a year or more to fill.” Wilcox Gonzalez described recruitment and retention problems that she said are undermining programs for families with children under 5 and for tuberculosis and infectious-disease response.
Rachel Green, a social worker in the Boston Public Health Commission’s school-based health centers, said low pay is a direct threat to continuity of care: “We are facing a dangerous staffing crisis driven by low salaries. Many of our frontline workers…cannot afford to live in the city that they serve.”
Multiple witnesses supplied local examples: Willow Osgood, a nurse practitioner who works in a school-based health center, said a nurse practitioner vacancy in her program has gone unfilled for an entire school year because applicants could not afford to live in Boston on the offered wage. Lisa White, who represents community health workers at the commission, described staff who “are the foot soldiers” of outreach programs but earn wages she described as comparable to entry-level janitorial rates.
Union speakers and BPHC employees told councilors the administration has proposed pay increases described in some briefings as modest (1.5–2% in recent proposals) that union leaders say do not close the gap with comparable city positions including Boston Public Schools nurses, fire and police medical staff, or grant-funded positions in the health system.
Speakers requested that the council amend the FY26 budget to include sufficient funding to bring BPHC wages closer to peer city departments, restore a multi-step pay scale and prevent ongoing turnover that they say undermines services for vulnerable residents.
Council members acknowledged the testimony and said the council will go into working sessions to consider budget amendments.
Council action on specific pay amounts or a ratified contract was not taken at the hearing; witnesses urged the council to provide funding authority and to press the administration to reach a settlement that is competitive with other city employers.
