“We care deeply about our work, but we also know that we deserve more for our role in driving Columbia’s research mission. This devaluing of our work is one of the main reasons such a large majority of Columbia postdocs voted to unionize in late 2018 and demanded a major increase in compensation in our first contract. Comparable New York City research institutions have found ways to significantly increase base salaries.”
On Friday we will have our 25th bargaining session with Columbia since we began bargaining almost a year ago. While we have reached several tentative agreements on important contract articles, we have yet to hear back from the administration on any of our economic proposals.
In actions across campus and the community over recent days, we sent a clear message that Columbia needs to dramatically improve compensation for Postdocs and Associate Researchers. The administration’s initial response makes clear we need to continue expanding our voice inside and outside bargaining if we want to win improved compensation and a fair union contract by April 6. As one Columbia administrator put it at the bargaining table, “The University does not believe that anyone is underpaid.” See below for more details on recent bargaining and related activities.
Fighting for fair compensation inside and outside bargaining
Thanks to the hundreds of Postdocs and Associates who signed our open letter, shared their stories and helped deliver our message regarding how Columbia’s lagging compensation practices harm us and scientific research.
As we were bargaining with the university team, a delegation of researchers from our union were also meeting with and explaining our goals with US Representative Grace Meng, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee that oversees the federal budget funding most of the research at Columbia.
At the bargaining table, we explained the basis for our proposal for significant compensation improvements and shared stories from Postdocs and Associates about how Columbia’s lagging salaries undermine excellence and hinder equity and inclusion in our research community.
The fact that minimum postdoc salaries at Columbia are roughly 14% to 17% behind other New York City research institutions underscores why fair compensation is a core priority in our negotiations.
Other Updates from Bargaining on January 17While we spent significant time on compensation, we also discussed our overall progress and believe we share a mutual interest with Columbia in reaching overall agreement on a contract in a timely manner.
We had a somewhat productive conversation around our package of four proposals on Appointments, Holidays, Vacation, and Leaves of Absence. We hope that by discussing all of these topics together, we can make progress on priority issues like improving the clarity and security of our appointments and establishing the right to fully-paid parental and other leaves of absence. We believe such improvements would make Columbia more competitive and inclusive.
While we believe Columbia genuinely wants to finish negotiations in a timely manner, the administration will need to make substantial changes to many of their proposals in order for us to reach a fair contract that achieves our bargaining goals. We have sessions scheduled for February 7 and February 12 and hope to continue making progress. Please click here to let us know if you can make it to an upcoming session.
Last year we reached several tentative agreements on important contract articles and presented the University administration with a complete set of economic proposals. We have yet to hear back from the administration on any of our economic articles.
This includes our compensation proposal, in which we presented the University with the evidence that Columbia is falling behind other NYC research institutions- Rockefeller, Mt. Sinai, and Memorial Sloan Kettering have all chosen to increase minimum salaries to at least $58,500 for postdoctoral researchers – with Cornell and NYU apparently planning to follow suit. It is clear that if we want fair compensation to match the high cost of living in NYC we will have to fight for it.
In our bargaining session on Thursday last week, we discussed Recognition, Intellectual Property, Non-Discrimination and Harassment, and Grievance and Arbitration articles.
Columbia made an official counter proposal on Non-Discrimination and Harassment that codified the verbal commitment they made last session to a work environment “free from abusive or intimidating behavior.” It also included a commitment to create a working group to discuss forms of abuse or harassment that are not covered under the University’s EOAA process, which would then make recommendations to the university administration for future policies.
Given that Columbia initially refused to acknowledge that power-based harassment is a major problem, we see their proposal as a step forward, which could improve the workplace environment for all workers on campus. However, we will continue to push beyond forming new committees to also establish enforceable protections against power-based harassment in our contract.
The university’s team also asked to have further discussion on Recognition (which says who is represented by the union). We continue to have concerns that the administration proposal could inappropriately exclude a small number of individuals with external fellowships who they believe are not “employees” of the University. We want to ensure that as many researchers as possible are represented and benefit from our contract. We intend to continue working to understand the variety of funding situations for fellows so we can reach an agreement that ensures maximum inclusion in our union.
We also briefly touched on Intellectual Property, asking some clarifying questions about the administration’s language, and gave Columbia a new counter proposal on Grievance and Arbitration that attempts to address some of Columbia’s concerns with the definition of a grievance.
We expect to have January bargaining dates sometime soon and will keep everyone informed as we move into the new year.
Next week, we will be holding town halls to discuss the current status of our campaign to win improvements in our first union contract. Come to learn about the bargaining process, progress we have made so far, and what it will take to overcome Columbia’s continued resistance to some of our core proposals.
In our latest bargaining session this week, we discussed Health and Safety, Intellectual Property, Leaves of Absence, and Non-Discrimination. As Columbia continues its overall evaluation of our economic proposals on topics like salaries and health benefits, which we gave to them several months ago, we expect to continue to bargain over our proposals on workplace rights and protections. Highlights from this paticular session revolve mostly around the topic of non-discrimination and our overall goal of negotiating improvements that enhance equity and inclusion at Columbia.
Columbia’s team informed us that, rather than consider our bargaining proposal on non-discrimination, they wanted to hear us explain our concerns regarding Columbia’s current policies on and approach to addressing discrimination and harassment at the University. The administration team further told us they intend to establish a campus-wide committee to review and recommend changes to the current non-discrimination policies and procedures. They proposed that this committee could include representatives from our Union and would be established some time next year. While we appreciate Columbia acknowledging that its policies could be improved, and are confident that the petition earlier this year from a majority of researchers helped bring them to that conclusion, we also do not see the establishment of a committee as a substitute for codifying specific rights in our union contract. While discussing these concerns with the administration, we again drew their attention to one component of our proposal that is completely missing in their EOAA policy – protections against power-based harassment or “bullying.”
The administration team acknowledged more clearly than before that bullying is a problem, can inhibit mentorship and the advancement of science, and should be examined more thoroughly. However, they continued to resist putting any protections against bullying into our collective bargaining agreement. Given that the University has never included the concept of bullying in its non-discrimination policies, we know we will continue to have to fight both at the bargaining table and outside the bargaining room in order to make progress on this increasingly important topic for the research community.
We also gave Columbia a new Health and Safety proposal and discussed some aspects of our respective positions on Intellectual Property. Finally, we reminded them about the importance of our proposal for paid parental leave, another component of our efforts to enhance gender equity at Columbia and an increasingly common benefit at comparable research institutions. They said they consider the proposal to have an economic cost to the University budget and so do not plan to respond until they finish evaluating and responding to all of our economic proposals.
We will keep you updated as always and let us know if you have any questions.
We will be holding town halls to discuss the current status of our campaign to win improvements in our first union contract. This is a great opportunity to learn about the bargaining process, progress we have made so far, and what it will take to overcome Columbia’s continued resistance to some of our core proposals.
Morningside: Monday, 12/16, 1-2pm in Fairchild, room 1000.
CUMC: Tuesday, 12/17, 12-1pm in Physicians and Surgeons, room 16-405 (Todd Amphitheatre)
Manhattanville: Wednesday, 12/18, 12:30-1:30pm, in Jerome L. Greene Science Center, room L7-119
21st Bargaining Session Update:
We had a brief bargaining session last week in which we discussed Health and Safety, Non-discrimination and Harassment, and health benefits.
We spent most of our time further discussing the topic of Non-Discrimination. We discussed some of the core components of our proposal to strengthen protections against bullying, discrimination and harassment. Our proposal would establish a timely grievance process, with interim protective measures during any investigation of the alleged discrimination or harassment, clear and easy access to union representation, and timely access to a neutral arbitrator if necessary. We continue to be disappointed in the administration’s formal responses to our proposal, especially since most of what we have proposed is increasingly common for postdoctoral researchers at other top-tier universities, like the University of California and University of Washington. We take Columbia at their word when they say they share our commitment to a research community free of bullying, discrimination and harassment. But based on their slow-moving response so far, we will clearly have more discussion on these issues as we continue forward in bargaining and it will continue to be important for PARs to make clear how important this is as part of our overall bargaining agenda.
The University also gave us a slightly revised proposal on Health and Safety, which we will respond to in our next session. Finally, we spent time in a subcommittee focused on our goal of improving the quality and affordability of PAR health insurance benefits.
In our latest bargaining session late last week, our main objective was to continue emphasizing how our proposals on Leaves and Non-Discrimination aim to advance one of our main goals – to improve gender and other forms of equity and make Columbia a more inclusive research community. In addition, we had further discussions on our other proposals on Health and Safety and Appointments and Reappointments.
Sexual harassment and lack of family-friendly policies, such as paid parental leave, create unacceptable barriers to gender equity at Columbia. As such, last week, we focused on attempting to understand Columbia’s objections to our Non-Discrimination proposal so we can try to work through them. The core of our proposal aims to ensure access to a fair procedure In the cases where discrimination, harassment or bullying occur. This means ensuring protection during the investigative process and timely access to a neutral arbitrator if necessary. Interestingly, Columbia’s team asked, for the first time, what we thought the problems were with their existing EOAA procedures. We explained our deep concerns and how our proposal addresses them. Furthermore, we cited that our proposal reflects improvements satisfactorily applied for tens of thousands of other unionized academic workers at other universities. Yet, Columbia’s team continued to attempt to justify the status quo. Even more interestingly, in contrast to the University’s defense, the day after our bargaining session, the Columbia Eye published a major story describing widespread dissatisfaction with the University’s EOAA processes. Based on this conversation, we remain determined to streamline and clarify the priority points of our proposal.
We also spent time discussing our latest Health and Safety proposal. While we have reached some common understanding about the overall importance of Health and Safety for a productive research environment, Columbia made clear during this latest session that they are somewhat out of touch with the dilapidated conditions of many of the research buildings around campus. We hope they return a more robust counter proposal on this topic next time we meet.
We are excited to be bargaining again in Studebaker room 207. We encourage everyone to come to the session for a first-hand view of the bargaining process and the administration’s positions on the topics we have proposed would be covered in our first contract.
We are now in our 9th month of bargaining for our first contract. We have proposed what we believe to be a complete set of articles covering the improvements postdocs and Associate Research Scientists have expressed are important through bargaining surveys filled out by a majority of researchers.
We are continuing to have constructive dialogue about several key areas of concern with the University, most notably Non-Discrimination, bullying, Health and Safety, and International Researchers Rights. We will meet soon in a break out committee to discuss our healthcare proposal. The University’s team has yet to respond to our economic proposals and has not made a counter to our compensation proposal.
In our latest bargaining session this week, we had further discussion on a handful of proposals, but reached no new tentative agreements. While we did have what we hope was useful dialogue on some of our proposals, it remains very clear that we still have a lot of work to do inside and outside the bargaining room in order to make progress on establishing new protections against bullying and harassment in our first contract. See below for more details about the topics covered in this session.
Non-Discrimination—we did not exchange any new written proposals on this article, but we did have substantive discussion of our proposed protections against “power-based harassment” or “bullying.” Columbia so far has shown little interest in including such a provision in our contract despite growing acknowledgement of the widespread nature of this problem at Columbia and in academia more generally, as well as hearing directly from researchers at Columbia about this problem. In the course of our discussion this week, the administration team objected to the particular language on bullying in our proposal. While they in no way committed to including the concept in the contract, we said we would consider alternative formulations of our language that could accomplish the same objectives in regards to this widespread problem. Given the importance of this issue, we intend to pursue every avenue to establish fair protections for researchers as part of our overall effort to make Columbia a more inclusive workplace.
Health and Safety – Columbia gave us a new proposal that incorporated a couple provisions we have been seeking, addressing notice requirements on asbestos projects and availability of first aid training. While we see this as progress, we still have a number of outstanding issues on this important topic.
International Researchers—The administration’s team continues to take a rigid position against many of the provisions in our proposal, focusing this week mostly on its refusal to consider language expanding researcher rights to be able to make more informed choices on visa options as the university wishes to retain the right to determine the visa of international researchers. They also believe that aspects of our proposal remains too “costly”. We expect to have many more conversations on this proposal.
Intellectual Property—While Columbia acknowledged that much of our proposal is similar to the existing University policies on these issues, they unfortunately have still made no counter proposal and continue to resist the idea of including protections against retaliation for a researcher who pursues a complaint related to intellectual property or research misconduct, even though this is a common protection in a growing number of union contracts in academia.
We also proposed a variety of bargaining dates in November and are waiting to hear back.
In regards to the CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee Vacancy Election scheduled to be on Thursday, October 17th, 2019, one of the candidates has withdrawn their candidacy from the election. As a result, there will no longer be an election.
The two remaining candidates have been elected by acclamation:
Pierre-Jacques Brun
Jozsef Meszaros
Congratulations to the newest members of the bargaining committee. Our next bargaining session is on October 28th from 1:00pm to 5:00pm in Studebaker room 367. Please RSVP if you would like to join us.
