2019-2020 Contract Negotiations

May 11th, 10 am @ Hammer LL2-207

• We arrived at 10am, the Columbia administration arrived around 10:25 am, and we got started. 
• 25 of us were in the room right now fighting for a better contract. There are 15 postdocs in the room standing behind our Bargaining Team of 10.
• First item on the agenda: the duration of our contract
  • CU Admin wants a longer agreement, we have proposed 3 years. We answered that Postdoc/ARS stay in the university for short times, high turnover, and therefore shorter agreements might be more in line with the interests of our unit. Especially with high inflation it might make sense to update the contract often, dependent on what we get for cost of living in our compensation package
• Next item: the list of arbitrators that CU Admin suggested
  • CU Admin wants us to go with their list of arbitrators. These arbitrators will resolve the grievances that postodocs/ARS will have when we are wronged by the CU Admin. These positions are important. We offered to come back to them next week. Admin says that they want us to accept one of theirs if we propose one of ours. We have proposed an idependent way to choose abitrators a few months ago through the American Association of Arbitrators, but they rejected really hard during Union-Managment meetings. We will get back.
• Next item on the agenda: the article on Union Access and Rights
  • We are asking for accurate information (lists) from the University. This is crucial for us to be able to find new postdocs and update them on the union, to monitor issues with pay and appointments, to enforce the contract regarding salary and other issues. We also want our staff to have access to University buildings so that they can contact workers. The Administration has been refusing to give our staff IDs, that prevents us from talking to postdocs and ARSs on a daily basis!
  • Additionally , the university refuses to give us data on gender, race, visa status etc. That prevents us from knowing if postdocs in differrent categories are treated unfairly!
  • CU Admin argues that giving access to buildings for our staff is an issue of confidentiality and security of their buildings. Right now two of our staff have not been given IDs, it has been 1 year since we asked for them.
  • Very long (and mildly surreal) discussion ensues about our staff having contractor IDs for access, and members of e-Board and Stewards having access to all University buildings. They insist that security that doesn’t allow them to give access. We reply that there could be a list of pre-approved people for access in buildings that will be reviewed every few months.
  • CU Admin objects to having mandatory orientations for every new postdoc by the Union. They say that if we make it mandatory there will be repercussions for the postdocs, but it turns out that at the end they are concerned about repercussions to the University if we complain that orientations don’t happen.
  • CU Admin is very happy with our advocacy on all issues, they are having a really nice discussion with us.  If so, PUT IT IN THE CONTRACT!!!
• Next item: Article on Recognition.
  • We ask that all postdocs who have “received a doctorate or its professional equivalent who provide services to the university” are hired as Postdocs or ARS and are in our Unit. And that they are given a full set of benefits (Fellows included!).
  • There are Fulbright Postdoc Fellows that get paid $45,000 a year!
  • We are explaining the power imbalance between incoming postdocs, and the University. How if we allow the University to categorize postdocs as Visiting Scholars they will create incentives for the Administration to pay all of us less.
  • The question is how postdocs that receive salary directly from external agencies will be treated. Should the source of funding define if a postdoc affords to pay the rent? Living on $45,000 in NYC!
  • CU Admin insists that a lot of our issues do not belong in this contract.
  • We replied: We are tired of CU Admin telling us that all of our issues do not belong in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (our contract)! What does and does not belong in a contract gets negotiated on this table and we have as much say as CU Administration does! (edited) 
  • We are asking for clarification from the Administration regarding who gets classified as Visiting Scholars. Why do people with fellowships end up sometimes being classified as Visiting Scholars and don’t get paid the minimum. CU Admin responds: It is workers that perform their own independent research, that will not benefit a Columbia Lab. We asked for written official definitions of the titles.
• CU Admin asked for a break. We are going to do a caucus now! During the session, we took breaks to discuss our strategy.
  • The importance of non verbal communication on the bargaining table. CU admin are coming in late, talking in circles, leaving cell phones on, etc. That is not a professional nor respectful way to present as a team.
  • Next strategy: we need to counter their stalling strategy.  Let’s get as much visibility as possible and show them how much we care about moving forward with negotiation for a better contract!
  • COME TO THE DEBRIEF SESSION and tell us what you think! Any suggestion, impression, or help is very much appreciated.
• Next item on the agenda: Job Postings (this is about Diversity and Inclusion) 
  • We want to promote diversity in the postdoc/ARS workforce as much as possible. In order to do that, the University needs to track applications and final hiring so that we can monitor bottlenecks in diversity and inclusion.
  • Columbia Admin says though they support diversity, that the are limited because diversity is only measured for citizens and green card holders only! And that limits them. It is hard to measure diversity with international populations, apparently… Again, they say you wouldn’t see in a contract the obligation to track diversity. That is how much they care and support diversity words but no actions! (edited) 
  • They say “We are hugely progressive organization”. They are okay with sharing information to regulators, not with us, they follow the federal categories and that’s that.
  • We say: Diversity should be part of the contract, any issue that affect our working conditions should be part of the contract. It is not only about workers not being fired without just cause, or receiving more than minimum compensation. Diversity is a matter of feeling safe and included at work. It affects if and how well underrepresented postdocs/ARSs can perform their research.
  • They say “University is committed and is doing a good job. But it is different to set up a formal tracking mechanism”
  • We want to change the culture of academia so that it is more inclusive and diverse. But in order to do that we need to have data so that we know what is happening, we need to track. Something that we can also scale up to other Universities too.. CU Admin says: we need to just talk, we can’t do more than that!
  • Columbia Admin: Imagine that you put this clause in the contract. And imagine that we track the data about diversity in the process of hiring postdocs. And then you find out that the process is biased and that hiring is not as diverse as it should be. Then what would you do, file a grievance?
  • They say: Columbia is part of the system, and as part of the system it could do better. But we are not doing that in a contract
• Next topic: Workspace and Materials
  • We ask for inclusivity and accessibility in our workplace “gender neutral bathrooms, and accommodations to ensure accessibility including but not limited to ramps, elevators and at least one automatic door per building, and adjustable desks as required by employees”
  • Columbia Admin: Again refuse to put that in the contract. They can give us data about some of these things. But they can obviously NOT   include that in a contract. They cannot guarantee an accessible workplace!
  • We also want: if a postdoc/ARS arranges remote work with the PI, that the University does not deny the request for remote work.
  • Columbia Admin: it is complicated. Is it remote work from Queens? Is it remote work from Montana? Is this one day remote? Is it three days a week remote? It it completely remote? These are real issues with the university as a whole. [sorry, but this is the level of argument here, it doesn’t make sense to me neither, I think he means to say: We are just not doing this]
  • We are asking to be treated like adults Example: There is a Columbia postdoc that lived in California, her experiments were in Stanford. The University Administration denied her permission to work remotely! CU Admin says: they would never want this to be grievable, they don’t want the union to be able to complain and resolve this issue for the postdoc. It is not on the PI to decide this, the University wants to control whether a PI allows their postdoc to work remotely. (edited) 
• Next item: Union Dues
  • We want to maintain a robust union, implementing mechanisms that ensure that new hires receive proper notice to their union rights, and are informed that they need to either to become members of the union, or to pay a fair share fee. And that Union fees are properly deducted, that the University does not randomly decide who the deduct dues from, that they are consistent and follow the rules.
  • There have been a lot of issues with this. We have invested a lot of resources (and written some code) to track their “mistakes”. They have been arbitrarily removing members from dues lists when they become fellows from postdoc, or from postdoc to fellow. And they owe us thousands of dollars from the last three years, that they refuse to acknowledge.
  • Columbia Admin: They also have a proposal on union dues, they want to make our union weaker by making it optional to pay a fair share fee, while we as members will still have to represent every worker and fight for everyone like we are doing today! We want to understand the logic (so will ask some questions after the break).
• CU Admin says: we are not sure if we will have a compensation proposal on Monday!!! We are pushing that it is very important for us to see what they have to offer because they are stalling all economic proposals. They are saying that they understand and they will do their best to give us something soon…. 
• They are not committing to anything. They understand our concerns and time pressures, and they hope to put a compensation proposal on the table soon. How magnanimous that they are not commiting to a timeline but they understand us so well…
• End of bargaining session #4

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May 9th, 10 am @ Studebaker, Room 469.

• We arrived at 10am, the Columbia administration arrived around 10:15 am, and we got started. 
• 20 of us were in the room right now fighting for a better contract. There are 13 postdocs in the room standing behind our Bargaining Team of 7.

The first topic was benefits!

• The union bargaining team presented our demands for updates to the contract related to benefits, citing examples and information gathered from the bargaining survey that a majority of postdocs completed, with benefits being rated as one of the highest priority topics.
• Contract demands include:
  • an update to the contract that states that benefits can not unilaterally be changed by the administration without consultation of the union, 
  • the start of fund to be made available to cover healthcare costs for members who need it, 
  • relocation costs to be provided by the university to support new hires moving to New York City, and housing support that provides a 10,000$ housing stipend, paid by the university.

• The university’s initial response is that they are rejecting all the suggested changes on benefits. They tried to emphasize that there have been increases to certain benefits since the contract came into effect, which we have access to – which is true. However, their response seems to ignore the actual requests – which still allows for changes to benefits, but not unilateral changes whereby the university would remove our benefits – such as they did with retirement (they cut retirement contributions during the pandemic!). 
• They have implied some openness to discussions on relocation costs, but nothing concrete. They are supposed to give us concrete language on specific articles, will they ever do that or are we just chatting?
• Columbia Admin asked if we would consider the possibility that the fund for postdoc/ARS expenses that we suggested could be operated through the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA), and the use of FSA accounts. These topics suggest some room for discussion – pending solid contract language, a fund through OPA, and/or deposited from the university into FSA accounts would be wins for the contract. To be clear, this is still just table discussions and it is still unclear if these things will be agreed or properly offered, as the Columbia side is not offering counter offers in terms of contract language, but generally just discussing ideas.
• A key point that the administration keeps emphasizing is that they have a consistent benefits package across all officers of research (this is an employment designation that the university uses that includes our members, and also other job titles, such as professors). Our bargaining committee is emphasizing that they understand this aspect (it’s a topic that came up in the first contract), and the updates we provided are actually designed to allow for a consistent benefits package across officers of research, with updates that provide increased protections to our members, and also improvements that meet our needs, while acknowledging and addressing that we are the lower salary tier of officers. Just because other officers like us have the same benefits as officers with higher salaries, it does not mean that it is working for us.

We decided to take a break and caucus!

• There was some talk on strategy – we are continuing to push on asking for their compensation offer, which they have thus far not stated their offer, despite us asking multiple times. 

The next topic we will bring up after they return is on compensation. 

• There was also some discussion on the bargaining process. Legally, the union and the employer (CU) have requirements to bargain in good faith with each other, as specified by labor law and supervised by the NLRB.
• So far Columbia’s Admisntration has been disregarding the process, not offering proposals by their own and not treating us like equals at the table. We think that is troubling but would want to hear from you! Join our organizing meetings, and recap discussions post bargaining sessions. Next one us this Friday at 12.30pm on zoom! [RSVP]

After the caucus, the next topic was compensation! 

• Our bargaining committee presented our compensation package, which includes changes to our minimum (increasing to 90K), updating yearly raises based on COLA (linking yearly raises to inflation, Cost Of Living Adjustment). We also clearly emphasized that at least part of the money that is requested should come from Columbia money, not just from the PIs, in particular for topics like the COLA adjustments.

• The initial response from Columbia was to call the demands unreasonable. They are emphasizing their desire to focus on “what the market is”. They are also pushing back strongly on the idea that Columbia’s Administration can fund compensation through their operating budget, they insist that all money should come through PI grants. We gave examples of Princeton and MIT, who have supported research and postdoc salaries with central University money.
• On the topic of the “market”, there was some conversation on “what is the market”. Our side presented data on average salaries for people with PhDs across different fields (beyond academia), showing that salaries exceed at least 90K, often well above 100K, across different sectors. It has been emphasized from the union side that there is a general difficulty with hiring postdocs – also reflecting that postdoc jobs do not compete with the market of options we have available. We are also emphasizing that the cost of living in NYC is a key factor in our demands. The Columbia administration continued to treat the demands as unreasonable, without engaging in any debate or counter-offers on what they considered an acceptable offer. 
• Are years of PhD research experience worth anything to the administration? “I don’t think the market rate is 90K for a postdoc who comes in with zero experience” – CU Admin

Short break (lunch break – we are not currently caucusing).

Next topic was: International workers. 

• Columbia’s Administration brought an additional person to the meeting who is joining for this section, Jane Acton who works with ISSO / the international office at Columbia university. She is being introduced as a topic expert who can help answer questions and work on topics related to international workers & visas.
• The initial discussion was about visa lengths, and most specifically, the duration of the DS-2019 which is a visa document related to the J1, which is a very common visa for international workers to be on. We request that where possible, the duration of the DS-2019 be set as the maximum number of years allowed (for example, the length of funding / contract), whereas currently duration is often set to be renewed every year, at cost to the employee (and the employer). Jane Acton, the ISSO representative, seems a bit surprised that departments aren’t necessarily doing what seems optimal. 
• The other broader comment from the Columbia administration is that they consider this to not be appropriate to be put into contract language.
• The discussion is largely oriented around what belongs in the contract, and how to address problems. The administration keeps trying to state that these things do not belong in the contract. The union team is emphasizing that after 3 years of having a contract, with numerous issues that have arisen, we understand that stating that “things will be addressed” is not sufficient to actually address problems. The union has brought up several examples of workers who have had issues whereby the university has created problems and not done visa management appropriately.
• Overall, they tend to emphasize that they think their processes are sufficient, that the union and postdocs/ARSs should just be individually reaching out with issues to the Administration (which we have done regularly, several generations of postdocs) wasting our energy and time, and that if some cases go wrong, it is not something that the contract can address. 
• We are now on a brief break – the general consensus from our side is to agree that visa topics are very complicated, and some specific notes and examples raised do reflect real difficulty in providing clear / useful / actionable contract language. The plan is to revise the contract language on this topic and present a revised proposal.

Last topic was vacations.

• In particular their suggested edit to the vacation clause – to remove the section that states that our unused vacation days can be paid out at the end of contract / termination.
• They repeated their desire to remove this clause. They claim that the original intent of this clause was to encourage postdocs/ARSs to take vacation, and that they trained PIs to encourage their postdocs/ARSs to do so. However, they think that we are not taking vacation because postdocs/ARSs want to focus “in career development” and “moving forward their projects”, which creates a budget problem when the appointment ends, as grants do not allocate money for unused vacation time. 
• It was noted by our team that their original argument (in the first section) was that unused vacation is difficult to track, and that they are currently making a different argument.
• From our side the union is asking questions and making some key points: for example, that postdocs/ARS are often discouraged from taking vacation. The union agrees with the desire to allow people to take vacation, but believes this is still an important contract element.
• The closing note on vacation is for each side to get more information, and bring edits – nothing was formally decided

End of bargaining session #3

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May 3rd, 1pm @ Hammer Building, LL210.

• Members of the two bargaining teams arrived (Postdoc Union, Administration 13 mins late). Negotiations started.  
• 35 of us are in the room right now fighting for a better contract. There are 25 postdocs in the room standing behind our Bargaining Team of 10.

• First on the agenda: Housing. Dan Driscoll (Administration team, VP of HR) made a long introduction saying they don’t want to discuss housing because they are not legally obligated.  
  • They said: We can discuss housing, but it’s not going to happen, not in a contract.
  • Our BC tried to explain that housing conditions affect working conditions, that when you are trying to perform your research it is hard to not have secure housing, and it is difficult to come new to this country or the city and find an apartment without a credit score or without a guarantor, needing 40x rent for annual income. If they want postdocs to agree to a contract they need to agree to make progress in housing!!! 
  • The Administration is refusing to provide more data on Housing: number of units available, cost of operation, and profit they make off our rent when postdocs have CU housing. If NYU provides subsidized housing $1500 for a studio in the village, why can’t Columbia subsidize rent more Uptown?

• We had our first break: The Administration left the room, we had a vibrant discussion. Issues that members brought up during caucusing:
  • Administration is refusing to talk about housing. They are not answering our questions. They are not putting specific proposals down on anything. They are not really engaging in bargaining, they “merely going through the notions” with no intention of reaching an agreement (this is called surface level bargaining. It is illegal for them to do that!).
  • They are saying that a lot of our issues can be solved through OPA, outside contract negotiations. We have tried for years!!! And generations of postdocs have tried before us! This is the only way!
  • How do we force the university to discuss compensation sooner rather than later? They are not making an offer for anything, but they also want to push compensation to the end. We need to increase the pressure.  
  • From our UAW service rep: if we can prove that housing affects our working conditions then it can be bargained. It is a really old law meant for factory workers, and we should not buy into their argument that they don’t have to bargain on housing.

• Second session started: Appointments and reappointments. We explained the struggle of not being appointed on time. No pay, email and ID cards deactivated for a month mostly, but sometimes up to 3-4 months!
  • We explained that Postdoc Fellows need to be considered employees of the University. Right now, they are considered contractors, and their salary is the same as other postdocs but are taxed higher and lose benefits.
  • The Administration first said they are obligated by Federal law to treat Fellows as contractors. Then when our BC said that other universities don’t do that, and that even Columbia in some cases classifies postdocs with fellowships as employees then they said that each university they are advised by their own tax counsel, and they have to follow their own counselors.
  • The BC emphasized that the NIH is now recommending that fellows have full employee status and thus a fellowship should be no reason not to extend employee benefits. Columbia seemed unaware of those recommendations, disputed them, and went back to their first argument, they have to follow their tax counsel. 
  • The Administration’s reply: They have changed their policies for re-appointments and think that it will be successful. They notify the postdoc that their re-appointment is coming up 150 days early (we have plenty of cases where we notified HR plenty in advance and we still didn’t get re-appointed on time).  They are also trying to centralize the system, and have lists of postdocs whose appointments are coming up, and claim to be monitoring the Schools if the paperwork for those reappointments doesn’t come in. But have we seen a difference? Shouldn’t they provide the data that their policy change has been effective, if that’s their claim?
  • We provided 161 pages of emails of postdocs trying to deal with HR over re-appointments at delays.
  • They don’t want to provide guarantees that re-appointment will be processed 30 days before our annual appointment is up! They say that there might be unintended consequences (sic). Like what if money appears one day before a re-appointment is up, shouldn’t they still  be appointed? We offered to look at exceptions if they give us specifics.

• Internationals:
  • We explained how having longer durations of visas would help postdocs. Now we have to pay renewal fees every year because forms are issued only for one year. They really don’t want to provide this due to some alleged “unintended consequences” that might happen but they refused to say today. We reinstated the very concrete and very real consequences that postdocs experience right now due to unnecessary yearly renewal. 
  • Tax issues: For example taxes being wrongfully withheld for SS, Medicare and Medicaid for some J1 visa holders (first two years) and many other issues
  • Admin told us that they have been responsive when we tell them, and that it is the postdocs job to keep bringing these issues to HR. How else would they be aware? Well, we are telling them on the bargaining table! 
  • We replied that we are not paid to do their job, that their incompetence is a burden on the postdocs.

• In closing, we made clear that the Administration is following an aggressive strategy: waiting until the last minute for a last offer on compensation with a strict deadline on June 30th when our contract expires. And that they aim to force us to accept a bad contract.
• Planning next sessions: Admin wants to spend next week (two sessions) discussing language of other articles, but non economic items. We asked: When are we starting the discussion about compensation? We are pushing hard to bring conversation to compensation as soon as possible. We have been working on this for months. For us it is important to know the Administration’s compensation proposal as soon as possible.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Read the minutes from the other sessions!

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