Bargaining Committee Vacancy Election

See below for the official notice of the Bargaining Committee Vacancy Election on Thursday, October 17th, 2019. Candidate statements, the guide to electioneering and more information can be found on the CPW-UAW website.

If you would like to volunteer as an election observer please click here.

NOTICE OF VACANCY ELECTION – UNION BARGAINING COMMITTEE (2 positions)

An election for two [2] CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee positions will take place on Thursday, October 17th, 2019 at the following times and locations.

Morningside: 10am-12pm, 1pm-6pm, in Joe’s Cafe in the Northwest Corner Building

CUMC: 10am-12pm, 1pm-6pm, in Hammer Health Sciences Building, Room LL1-104

Lamont: 10am-2pm, in the Cafeteria

Manhattanville: 10am-12pm, 1pm-4pm, Forum cafe (The Forum)

A run-off election, if necessary, will be held on Thursday, October 24th, 2019 from 10am to 6pm. The locations will be announced if necessary.

The following candidates have accepted nomination for the two [2] CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee positions:

Pierre-Jacques Brun

Laureline Josset

Jozsef Meszaros

The election will be conducted with the two [2] candidates who receive the highest number of votes being elected. All eligible Union supporters [any Columbia Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Associate Research Scientist, or Associate Research Scholar who is currently employed by the university] who have filled out a CPW-UAW authorization card or a bargaining survey are eligible to vote. Members of the bargaining unit who have not done so may fill out an authorization card at the polls prior to voting.

Ballots will be counted after the polls close at Brownie’s Cafe (basement of Avery Hall).

In our latest bargaining session with the Columbia team yesterday, we made a little bit more progress even as we continue to have many major issues to resolve. We are happy to report that we reached a tentative agreement on our Employment Files article. We had further substantive discussion and gave new proposals on Health and Safety and International Researcher Rights. We also discussed setting aside additional time to discuss our proposal to enhance paid leave options, a key component of our efforts to enhance gender equity in our contract negotiations. See below for a more extensive update.

Click here if you want to join us after the Velocity ride on Sunday.

Tentative agreement on Employment Files: Our tentative agreement on this topic ensures confidentiality of our employment files; prompt access to our files when we request it; the right to review and copy our files; and the right to submit a response to any information we disagree with, which will be maintained as part of the file.

Health and Safety. We gave Columbia a new counter proposal on this topic that aimed to be responsive to some of the concerns they had raised in response to our previous proposals. While we have achieved a conceptual agreement that PARs will have enforceable health and safety protections under our contract, Columbia continues to refuse to provide more detailed language that we believe would help clarify certain aspects of those rights. We hope they bring a more responsive counter proposal to our next session.

International Researcher Rights. In our counter proposal on international researcher rights, we made a number of modifications based on some of our discussions last week with representatives from the International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO). For example, we acknowledged that some of our proposed provisions could more clearly acknowledge how federal law places certain constraints on what the University can and cannot do to enhance the rights of PARs on issues such as visa options.

More discussion on paid leaves. We made clear that we hope to have further discussions in coming weeks about our proposal to improve paid leave options for PARs. We see improved paid family leave in particular as a critical benefit that could make Columbia more inclusive and be a leader in enhancing gender equity in the academic workforce. Numerous studies make clear that the lack of family-friendly benefits, including paid parental and family leave, disproportionately hurt women and constitute one of the barriers to women’s access to and participation in the academic workforce.

Our next full bargaining session is on October 28. We will keep you informed of any other major development.

Best,

CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee

CPW-UAW Notice of Nomination

NOTICE OF NOMINATION AND VACANCY ELECTION FOR THE UNION BARGAINING COMMITTEE (two [2] positions)

October 2, 2019

Nominations are hereby declared open for the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-UAW (CPW-UAW) Bargaining Committee (two [2] positions): All eligible Union supporters [any Columbia Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Associate Research Scientist, or Associate Research Scholar who is currently employed by the university] who have filled out a CPW-UAW authorization card or a bargaining survey are automatically nominated for the CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee.

There are two [2] positions open on the bargaining committee.

Any eligible Union supporter who wishes to accept the nomination for one of the two (2) Bargaining Committee positions listed above must indicate their intention in writing, by electronic scan (pdf), photograph attachment, or by hand delivery of a signed acceptance of nomination for the specified position above no later than 5:00pm on Wednesday, October 9th, 2019: CPW-UAW Elections, 256 W 38th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or by e-mail to columbiapostdocunion@gmail.com.

Click here to learn more about the responsibilities of bargaining committee members.

Candidate statements:

Each candidate may write and submit a candidate statement of no more than 250 words. These statements will be posted on the CPW-UAW website if there are contested elections. Address, phone number and email address must be included, but will not be counted toward the 250 words.

It is the responsibility of the candidate to submit the candidate statement. All candidate statements must be received by the time nominations close at 5:00pm on Wednesday, October 9th, 2019.

Election Dates, Times and Locations:

In the event that the number of eligible candidates who accept nomination does not exceed two (2), such candidate(s) will be deemed elected by acclamation and no election will be held.

If more than two (2) eligible candidates accept nomination, an election will be conducted with the two (2) candidates who receive the highest number of votes being elected. All eligible Union supporters [any Columbia Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Associate Research Scientist, or Associate Research Scholar who is currently employed by the university] who have filled out a CPW-UAW authorization card or a bargaining survey are eligible to vote. Members of the bargaining unit who have not done so may fill out an authorization card at the polls prior to voting.

Elections will take place on Thursday, October 17th, 2019 at the following times and locations.

Morningside: 10am-12pm, 1pm-6pm, in Joe’s Cafe in the Northwest Corner Building

CUMC: 10am-12pm, 1pm-6pm, in Hammer Health Sciences Building, Room LL1-104

Lamont: 10am-2pm, in the Cafeteria

Manhattanville: 10am-12pm, 1pm-4pm, Forum cafe (The Forum)

A run-off election, if necessary, will be held on Thursday, October 24th, 2019 from 10am to 6pm. The locations will be announced if necessary.

Voters shall be entitled to vote for a total of two (2) candidates.

Join us at the Velocity Ride to End Cancer!

On Sunday, October 6th, some of us will be handing out information after the Velocity Ride to End Cancer, an important fund-raising event for cancer research at Columbia. We will be sharing information about the important role of postdocs and ARSs and how improvements to our working conditions can enhance the quality of research. Please click here if you would like to join us.

Bargaining Update 9/26/2019

In our most recent bargaining session, we exchanged proposals on a handful of topics and had a lengthy discussion with representatives from the University’s International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO). We reached no new tentative agreements. Among highlights, Columbia’s team finally gave us an initial counter proposal on our International Researcher Rights article; and we presented our initial counter proposal to the University’s Management and Academic Rights article. See below for more details about the session.

International Researcher Rights. We spent most of the session hearing from and asking questions of two representatives from the ISSO. As PARs appreciate the ISSO and all it does, we were glad to have the opportunity to ask questions about how they currently handle a variety of issues related to our proposal, such as how and why the University determines whether to apply for a H versus J (or other) visa when offering an appointment to a postdoc or ARS.

The University’s first proposal on this topic was definitely an important step in the right direction acknowledging some of the unique concerns of international PARs, but it has major flaws. While the University envisions the possibility of PARs continuing to work or be re-employed when they are prevented from re-entry to the US or otherwise have problems with work authorization status, important aspects of our proposal, their language has far too many contingencies to make these meaningful provisions at this point. Their proposal also makes no mention of several other critical topics from our proposal.

Management Rights. As this article is one of Columbia’s central priorities, we presented an initial counter proposal that seeks to balance our desire to negotiate enforceable workplace rights and improvements with the administration’s desire to maintain their academic and management rights to run the university. We expect such an article to be in our final contract, but our proposal is contingent on reaching a complete agreement as we are only willing to acknowledge their management rights once we know what OUR rights will be under our contract.

Other proposals exchanged. We gave new counter proposals on Employment Files, Grievance and Arbitration, and Union Security. The University gave us a new counter proposal on Health and Safety. On this last topic, while we have reached a common understanding that PARs will have broadly enforceable rights to a safe and healthy workplace, the University continues to refuse to acknowledge some of the specific examples that we would like to see enumerated in the contract language. After two subcommittee meetings on this topic, we were disappointed not to see more substantive change in their proposal. We will continue to work on this one.

Our next session is October 3rd from 2:00-5:00pm at CUMC in Hammer LL210.

Please let us know if you would like to attend a bargaining session.

Best,

CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee

We presented all of our remaining economic proposals on Monday’s bargaining session. While we can make additional proposals if we need to, we have now given the administration proposals on all of the topics we have intended to cover. The proposals we made were: Titles and Classifications, Childcare, Housing, Parking and Transportation, Campus Facilities, Work-Incurred Injury or Illness, and Professional Development.

As a whole, our complete set of economic proposals is an ambitious effort to address one of the primary concerns raised by postdocs and Associate Research Scientists throughout our campaign: that the uniquely high cost of living in NYC creates a variety of challenges that undermine PARs’ ability to focus effectively on our research. We expect to have numerous discussions covering these topics in the coming months before reaching a fair agreement.

Our Titles and Classifications article sets out to clearly define the qualifications, roles and responsibilities of Postdoctoral Research Scientists/Scholars/Fellows and Associate Research Scientists/Scholars (PARs), which we hope will help avoid any misunderstandings in the future.

Our Childcare proposal seeks to improve upon the subsidy offered to PARs through Columbia and expand the age criteria for eligible children. We also hope to maintain the existing programs and resources offered through Columbia such as backup childcare and childcare centers.

Our Housing article aims to address numerous challenges PARs face when they move to NYC, such as limited availability of University-owned housing, , the opaque lottery process, and high rents.

The Parking and Transportation article expands the transportation options for PARs. By expanding transportation subsidies, vehicle and bicycle parking options, we hope to improve upon the costly transportation issues we face in NYC.

Our Campus Facilities article proposes that PARs have affordable access to on-campus facilities such as gym/recreational facilities, cultural, and athletic events.

Our Work-Incurred Injury or Illness proposal ensures that if a PAR is unable to work because of a work related injury or ailment that the University would cover any costs and maintain full compensation and benefits.

The Professional Development article would expand resources and opportunities for PAR professional development opportunities while at Columbia. We see a clear mutual interest between us and the University to maintain and expand upon the opportunities we have to continue our training and contribute to the world class research here at Columbia.

Our next bargaining session is September 26th from 1:00pm-5:00pm at CUMC in the lower level of Hammer, room LL110.

Please RSVP if you would like to attend a bargaining session.

Best,

CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee

We had a short bargaining session on Thursday where we presented initial proposals on our major economic topics. We made proposals on Compensation, Health Benefits, Retirement, Relocation Benefits, Tuition Benefits, and Tax Assistance. We expect to have many discussions over these issues in coming months before reaching a fair agreement. We also expect to provide a few more outstanding proposals on our next bargaining session on September 16th.

Please RSVP if you would like to attend a bargaining session.

Throughout our campaign and in hundreds of bargaining surveys, PARs have made clear the extreme financial challenges of working and living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. These challenges not only make our lives difficult, but also undermine our ability to give our fullest attention to the research that brought us to Columbia in the first place.

Our economic proposals as a whole aim to improve the overall standard of living for PARs and our families, strengthen our ability to focus on the research we care about, and make Columbia a more inclusive and competitive institution. For example, in recent years, Columbia has fallen behind other NYC institutions who have increased minimum Postdoc salaries significantly. When accounting for cost of living, we also believe Columbia salaries lag far behind colleagues at places like Harvard, Yale and Stanford. To remain fair and competitive, Columbia must do better.

In addition to giving initial economic proposals, we briefly revisited the topic of Non-Discrimination. Thus far, Columbia has barely changed its position on this priority issue for PARs. Since, among other things, the administration has refused to consider protections against “bullying” in the contract because they question whether it is a real problem, we provided them with some of the latest news coverage from the journal Nature about the growing acknowledgement of and efforts to address this problem in the international research community. Unfortunately, Columbia’s bureaucratically-oriented administrators are out of touch with what daily life can be like in a research laboratory. Rather than engage in more arguments at the table yesterday on this important topic, we chose to provide them with additional information to give them an opportunity to consider the importance of this proposal.

Our next bargaining session September 16th at the Studebaker Building from 9:00am-1:00pm.

Best,

CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee

Thanks to the everyone who attended bargaining yesterday. Unfortunately, we had another challenging bargaining session with Columbia. We had further discussion about our concerns that the University proposal on Recognition could improperly exclude paid-direct Postdoctoral Research Fellows from coverage and rights under our contract. Our conversations on this topic have been frustrating in part because the University has repeatedly changed its position on the number of people they believe might be excluded under their proposal. Yesterday’s discussion became quite intense across the table. Unfortunately, rather than continue attempting to work through our differences, Columbia’s team chose to end our bargaining session one hour earlier than scheduled.

Prior to the discussion on Recognition, we spent more time on Discipline and Discharge, Employment Files and Leaves, which we hope ends up helping us ultimately reach fair agreements on those topics. For example, on Discipline and Discharge, where both the University and the Union proposals include “just cause” protections against arbitrary termination, we continued a discussion from our last session on other areas of difference in our positions. We also attempted to work through a few remaining differences around the nature and timing of researchers’ right to access and be assured of the contents of their Employment Files.

We still have more work to do on these proposals before reaching agreements and we were disappointed that the University chose to walk out on the session when it got particularly challenging as opposed to remaining committed to working through differences to reach a fair agreement.

Our next bargaining session September 5th at the Medical Center from 1:00pm-5:00pm. Please RSVP if you would like to attend a bargaining session.

We had a frustrating bargaining session yesterday. While we hoped to come closer to and/or reach tentative agreements on several contract articles, we made very little progress.

We spent much of our session discussing our Intellectual Property proposal. Our proposal aims to clarify that postdocs and Associate Research Scientist (PARs) have the same rights as other full-time researchers, including faculty, as well as create clear protections against retaliation for PARs who pursue complaints involving intellectual property or scholarly misconduct. The University unfortunately has refused to make a proposal on this topic and told us today they intend to have no language in our contract at all in this area. Columbia’s team attempted to argue that because this topic is related to the academic mission of the University the rights of PARs do not belong in an agreement covering employment conditions. Given the enormous contributions we make to the University’s research mission, as employees, we obviously disagree.

We also had further discussion of our Recognition, Employment Files, and Discipline and Discharge proposals. On Recognition, the university continues to propose language that we are concerned would unnecessarily exclude people who bring their own funding to Columbia who believe would appropriately be represented by the Union. We believe we came a little closer to agreement on Employment Files, but will need to keep working on this topic. Finally, in an effort to come closer together on Discipline and Discharge, we had a lengthy discussion aimed at understanding how the university currently handles potential discipline and discharge of PARs. We expect to have many more conversations on this article in coming sessions.

Frustrating sessions like yesterday show that to achieve a fair contract we will need to demonstrate to the University that we are valuable members of the research community and we deserve fair and equitable working conditions in our contract.

Our next bargaining session August 15th at the Medical Center from 9:00am-1:00pm. Please RSVP if you would like to attend a bargaining session.

We had a short bargaining session yesterday, as well as a separate Health and Safety-focused bargaining subcommittee meeting at the end of last week. We are happy to report that we reached another tentative agreement yesterday on an article establishing fair workload protections. We spent most of our time yesterday discussing our proposals on Recognition, Employment Files, and Discipline and Discharge. While we did not reach agreement on those articles, or on our Health and Safety proposal, we believe we had constructive dialogue that will help us move forward. See below for a summary of these sessions.

Tentative agreement on Workload—We believe we reached agreement on a fair contract provision that establishes protections and an avenue of recourse against cases of abusive, arbitrary or unreasonable workload assigned by a supervisor, while also respecting the right of individual PARs to work as many hours on our projects as we choose.

Recognition—We are still working out some details on language. We want to make clear that the Union represents all the employees that were intended to be represented by our Union in the NLRB case and avoid any language that could open the door for some workers being inappropriately excluded. We hope to reach tentative agreement on this article soon.

Employment Files—While we have moved much closer to agreement on this article, the university still refuses to ensure the right for PARs to comment on information we believe is inaccurate in our employment files. This is a common provision in other postdoc union contracts.

Discipline and Discharge—While Columbia has agreed to the “just cause” standard, an important protection against arbitrary termination of position, we still have a number of differences in how to implement that standard most effectively under our contract.

Health and Safety—A subset of our respective bargaining committees met for a couple hours on Friday to discuss our Health and Safety proposals. We got to meet face-to-face with leadership of the University’s Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) office, learn about existing procedures at the university, hear their reactions to our initial bargaining proposal, and discuss possible ways to move toward agreement. We felt it was a productive meeting overall that will inform our next proposal to ensure that all PARs work in a safe, healthy environment and receive the training and equipment necessary to do so.

Our next bargaining session August 8th in the Studebaker Building from 9:00am-1:00pm. Please RSVP if you would like to attend a bargaining session.

Best,

Click here if you would like to share your experience with us on why having stronger protections against bullying and harassment will help make Columbia a more inclusive research community.

In our latest bargaining session Thursday, we spent most of our time discussing Columbia’s resistance to including protections against bullying in our contract. We also passed updated proposals on Recognition, Non-Discrimination and Grievance and Arbitration and the university’s team gave updated proposals on Leaves and Employment Files.

Bullying: CU says bullying protections would restrict P.I.s’ ability to mentor good researchers

The discussion regarding bullying was particularly frustrating. Even though members of their own bargaining team — as well as a growing number of observers of academic science, including Nature magazine — acknowledge bullying as a problem, Columbia so far is refusing to put language in our contract establishing protections against such destructive behavior. While we believe our proposed protections against “Power-Based Harassment” would enhance our ability to engage in quality research, the University team actually said on Thursday that such protections would put unreasonable restrictions on a PI’s ability to effectively mentor Postdocs and Associate Researchers and would thus undermine research.

The university team claimed that it would be impossible to clearly define bullying in the contract and that the lack of clarity would lead PIs to refrain from mentoring out of fear that PARs would abuse our ability to construe interactions with our PIs as “bullying.” While we would be happy to consider alternative definitions from the University, we find their outright rejection of our proposal thus far totally unacceptable — citing unsubstantiated and unreasonable claims that our proposal would hinder or inconvenience supervisors is not a legitimate reason to reject protections against the widely acknowledged problem of bullying in the academic workplace.

Please let us know how you think protections against bullying and other forms of harassment can help make Columbia a more inclusive research institution.

Continuing to move forward on other Proposals:

In other activity in our session, we passed an updated proposal on Recognition, attempting to clarify our mutual understanding that the small number of individuals who do research at Columbia, but who are in fact fully compensated and receive benefits from another employer (e.g. Howard Hughes Medical Institute) would not be part of our bargaining unit.

In response to concerns raised by the University, we also modified our Grievance and Arbitration article to define a grievance as a violation of the contract or other adverse action against any postdoc or Associate Research Scientist (PAR).

The university’s team gave us a few counter proposals as well, including updated versions of Employment Files and Leaves. While we believe we have moved closer to agreement on Employment Files, we have a long way to go to on paid leaves of absence. While they have agreed to outline the existing policies in the contract, which would make them clearer and more enforceable, Columbia’s team continues to refuse to offer any material improvement to critical aspects of leave. For example, they refuse to agree to improved paid parental leave, which remains one of the large institutional barriers to women and parents’ ability to advance in academia.

We are bargaining again this Monday 7/29 from 2:00-5:00pm in Studebaker 469. If you would like to join us please RSVP here.

Best,

CPW-UAW Bargaining Committee