About 830 medical residents who work in University at Buffalo-affiliated hospitals are set to go on a four-day strike after midnight Tuesday, even as negotiations between their union and employer continued Monday.
Union negotiators made “a little bit of progress” with University Medical Resident Services (UMRS), the private corporation that employees UB’s medical residents, over the weekend, according to Dr. Stuart Bussey, the president of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), which represents UB-affiliated medical residents. But Bussey said he still expected the strike to move forward as scheduled.
“We’re just waiting for an adequate offer, and if it doesn’t come today, we’re going to go on strike at midnight,” Bussey said in a phone interview with WBFO. “Right now, the balls in their court, and we’re willing to talk this week.”
UAPD accused UMRS of “a year of bad faith bargaining” in a statement last month.
On Tuesday, Lawrence Ross, a lawyer for UMRS, said in a statement that the company had proposed salary increases for residents that was “virtually the same as was proposed by the union.”
Medical residents say they want higher pay, better health insurance and retirement plan options, among other demands.
Pro-union residents in UB-affiliated hospitals have long maintained that they make less than minimum wage and less than residents in other Upstate New York hospitals. Bussey said UB-affiliated residents were put in an even worse financial situation last year, when UMRS “unilaterally” changed their health benefits last year without advance notice, increasing residents’ premiums and deductibles.
“They have to pay out of pocket — thousands of dollars out of pocket this year — where they wouldn’t have done that last year with the other plan,” “They make less than $15 an hour. If you compute 80 hours a week, they’re making like 60-grand or less. It comes out to less than $15 an hour, so they’re not exactly rolling in it.”
The planned strike comes about a year and a half after UB residents overwhelmingly voted to unionize in May 2023.
A spokesperson for UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences said that medical residents are employed by University Medical Resident Services (UMRS), a private corporation, and not the university. UB is not party to the negotiations.
“The Jacobs School continues to support and advocate for salary increases for medical residents and improvements to their educational and working conditions,” the Jacobs School spokesperson said in a statement. “Although neither UB nor the Jacobs School are the legal entity responsible for negotiations with the medical residents, we remain hopeful that progress will be made in the negotiations and a strike will be avoided.”
