Columbia made its most substantial economic proposal yet in yesterday’s bargaining session, but the University’s overall package of proposals still falls short of what we would consider a fair agreement. This is especially true in their continued effort to provide insufficient protections against discrimination and harassment.
We made significant progress in two major areas. First, we finished a tentative version of language for the Grievance and Arbitration article, the fundamental process for enforcing our agreement with the University. Second, the University made a major new Compensation proposal that would raise minimum Postdoc salaries to $60,000 effective July 1, 2020, including parity for Fellows, and raise minimum Associate Researcher salaries to $66,100.
While we recognize the significance of the University’s Compensation proposal, it would leave hundreds of researchers who are already above those minimums without any guaranteed increases in the first year of our contract and would include insufficient future increases for all researchers. While there is now an overall improvement in the economics, the University continues to simultaneously propose weak and unpredictable protections against discrimination and harassment, and appears to be introducing new arguments at the last minute to justify lengthy delays in getting to fair resolutions of complaints/grievances in this area.
We expect to be bargaining again this week and will keep you posted. If you would like to read a summary of the overall status of our negotiations, go to our website here.
Please Join us for a virtual Town Hall on Thursday, June 25 for the latest updates about where things stand, including progress made and continuing challenges, and to join the discussion about how we can show Columbia that we want a strong and fair first contract. Register here for the virtual Town Hall on Thursday, June 25th at 1:00pm.
Yesterday, UAW local 5810, (the postdoc union at UC) in conjunction with UAW local 2865 (Graduate employees at UC) hosted an immigration attorney to help explain and answer questions about the impact of President Trump’s Executive Order that suspends entry to the US for some non-immigrants. You can watch a recording of the information session here. Please reach out to columbiapostdocunion@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.
In solidarity,
CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee