More than 1,000 resident physicians and fellows represented by the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare (CIR/SEIU) at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMed) voted to ratify the union’s first-ever contract last Friday, with 99 percent voting in support. This comes after nearly a year of negotiations, including a unity break and two full-day bargaining sessions in the past two months.
The contract provides a 17 percent overall wage increase distributed over five years, along with rideshare reimbursements for long shifts and a $9,000 annual stipend that acts as a recruitment incentive for prospective residents. Additionally, the resident physicians gained due-process protections designed to ensure that specific departments cannot alter their contracts or programs without staff input.
In the union’s press release, residents stated that “the deal will have a direct impact on both their well-being and their ability to provide high-quality patient care.” The union, comprising over 1,000 resident physicians, voted to unionize with a 98 percent majority in May 2024. The agreement with UCMed comes just over a month after the resident physicians at Northwestern’s McGaw Medical Center ratified their first union contract.
CIR/SEIU described a “contentious months-long contract fight, marked by staunch resistance on the part of the UChicago administration.”
“They definitely made us feel like they weren’t as interested in doing this in a timely way,” said Marin Mazeres, a psychiatry resident and member of the bargaining committee. “There [were] a couple of missed meetings or moments where they essentially left in the middle of meetings while we were still asking questions to them.”
“We had to escalate essentially… by doing a unity break or signing petitions,” Mazeres continued. “It resulted in getting two [bargaining] sessions in person that lasted an entire day, which is how we ultimately ended up being able to have this tentative agreement.”
The primary organizing efforts centered on economic proposals aimed at reducing staff burnout and alleviating financial insecurity. Referring to the $9,000 annual stipend to be distributed at the upcoming ratification and every subsequent July, Mazeres said it “is there to represent a coalition of different financial supports that we really felt [UCMed] needed [to offer] in order to remain attractive to future residents who want to come here,” he said. “[We] also [want] to make sure that [in] the couple hours that we are outside of the hospital, we’re not struggling for food or struggling with feeding our families.”
Residents work 80-hour weeks, sometimes with 24- to 28-hour shifts, amid rising affordability concerns in Hyde Park and Woodlawn. The starting salary for the first-year residents in the 2025–26 year was $75,205.
Through July 2029, “the nearly five-year agreement will continue [UCMed’s] support for physician trainees as we fulfill our educational and patient care missions,” UCMed wrote in a statement to the Maroon.
