Columbia’s first official response to our union

 

 

Yesterday we completed our first day of hearings at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Columbia did not accept our petition to have all Postdoctoral Research Scientists, Postdoctoral Research Fellows and Associate Research Scientists vote on and be represented by our union, Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-UAW (CPW-UAW).  Because Columbia did not agree to our petition, the NLRB takes time to hold hearings in order to hear arguments and evidence so that it can issue an official ruling determining “an appropriate bargaining unit” for our union.

Columbia made several arguments challenging our proposed union.  First and foremost, and by far most disappointing, Columbia asserted that because Postdoctoral Research Scientists and Postdoctoral Research Fellows are “in training,” not “employees,” and therefore should be denied the right to vote on unionization and engage in collective bargaining.  Columbia made two additional arguments against our proposed unit in case the NLRB rejects Columbia’s first argument: (1) Fellows should be excluded because they are not employees of Columbia; and (2) Associate Research Scientists should not be in the same bargaining unit as PDRS and PDRF because our work and conditions are so different that we do not share a “community of interest.”

Knowing Columbia’s long history of attempting to avoid bargaining with our graduate worker colleagues, we should not be surprised.  But it is still disappointing to see Columbia attempt to dismiss our effort to form a union together and to attempt to block PDRS and PDRF the right to a union entirely.

Fortunately, we are hopeful that the hearings will be short and we are confident in the strength of our proposal for a union of all postdoctoral researchers together. We know the critical role that PDRS and PDRF make to the world-renowned research at Columbia. As PDRS and PDRF and Associate Research Scientists, we all work side by side, collaborate with the same faculty, share similar conditions and have a shared interest in collective bargaining so that the central administration no longer unilaterally determine our pay, benefits and rights.

We will provide another update soon to keep everyone informed on the development of our case.

If you want to get more involved with building the union, please click here.

Best Wishes,

Members of the CPW-UAW Organizing Committee

 

Postdoc Union Town Halls this Week!

 

Come to a Postdoc Union town hall to find out more about our upcoming vote.

Last week, we took an exciting step forward by filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to certify our union. As we approach our official union election in the near future, we want to make sure all postdocs can hear about next steps, discuss why we are unionizing, ask questions and learn about  how you can get involved.

So, we are holding open Town Halls this week where postdoctoral researchers can get answers to any questions you may have, like:

  • Who is eligible to vote in our upcoming union election?
  • How will the vote be held?
  • How have postdocs at other universities benefited from unionizing?
  • How is Columbia responding as we get closer to having our vote?

Food and beverages will be provided. Please RSVP so we know how many people to expect:

Morningside: Thursday, 8/16, Fairchild Building, room 1000 12:30-1:30pm

CUMC: Friday, 8/17, P&S, Todd Amphitheater room 16-405 1:00-2:00pm

We are excited to vote yes in our upcoming election to certify our union. After the election we want to move into bargaining as quickly as possible.

Please take a minute to join hundreds of other postdoctoral researchers and take the postdoc union bargaining survey.

The more people that participate the more prepared we will be to negotiate a strong contract with the Columbia administration. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

Best Wishes,

Members of the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

 

A Big Step Forward for our Postdoc Union: CPW-UAW Files a Petition with the NLRB

A Big Step Forward for our Postdoc Union: CPW-UAW Files a Petition with the NLRB  

We are excited to announce that today we filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking certification of CPW-UAW as our union!

Please join us for a town hall to discuss next steps. Come learn more about next steps, ask questions about the process and talk with other postdocs helping to build the union. Please RSVP here so we can know how many people to expect.

The Town Halls will be:

Morningside: Thursday, 8/16, Fairchild Building, room 1000 12:30-1:30pm

CUMC: Friday, 8/17, P&S, Todd Amphitheater room 16-405 1:00-2:00pm

As a majority of postdoctoral researchers have signed up for CPW-UAW, this is an important next step in the establishment of our union. We hope the university will refrain from any efforts to delay the process so that we can move efficiently to an election where we can exercise our democratic choice on whether to engage in collective bargaining to help make the university stronger.

In order to help us prepare for negotiating a strong contract with the Columbia administration, please join hundreds of other postdoctoral researchers and take a minute to fill out the postdoc union bargaining survey.

In moving ahead, we join a growing national movement of academic workers who have come together to form unions as part of the UAW. Postdocs at the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut have both chosen overwhelmingly to unionize in recent months and are now entering negotiations with their universities.

CPW-UAW will be the first postdoc union at a private university and we are excited to join the tens of thousands of postdocs, graduate employees and adjunct faculty unionized with the UAW at over 60+ campuses across the nation.

 

Sincerely,

Members of the CPW-UAW Organizing Committee:

Silvia Affo, PhD (Department of Medicine, Digestive & Liver Diseases)

Medini Annavajhala, PhD (Department of Medicine, division of Infectious Diseases)

Florence Borot, PhD (Department of Medicine)

Debanjana Chatterjee, PhD (Department of Medicine, Nephrology)

Subrata Chowdhury, PhD (Department of Genetics and Development)

Steven Cook, PhD (Department of Biological Sciences)

Álvaro Cuesta-Domínguez, PhD (Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics)

Nabil Daddaoua, PhD (Department of Neuroscience)

Jonathan De Roo, PhD (Department of Chemistry)

Rainer Engelken, PhD (Department of Neuroscience)

Carlos Forsythe (Department of Physics)

Marta Galán-Díez, PhD (Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics)

Yoona Kang, PhD (Department of Genetics and Development)

Kalpita Karan, PhD (Department of Psychiatry, Behavioral Medicine)

Reka Letso-Recinos, PhD (Department of Biological Sciences)

Zachary McDargh, PhD (Department of Chemical Engineering)

Fabian Munoz, PhD (Department of Neuroscience)

Panos Oikonomou, Phd (Department of Systems Biology)

Maria Jose Ortuño Romero, PhD (Department of Genetics and Development)

Tulsi Patel, PhD (Department of Pathology and Cell Biology)

Evan Paull, PhD (Department of Systems Biology)

Laura Pereira, PhD (Department of Biological Sciences)

Pablo Pérez-Duran, PhD (Institute for Cancer Genetics)

Hila Milo Rasouly, PhD (Department of Medicine, division of Nephrology)

Dario Sirabella, PhD (Columbia Stem Cell Core Facility)

Evgenia Verovskaya, PhD (Department of Genetics and Development)

Agnieszka Wendorff, PhD (Institute for Cancer Genetics)

Naomi Zewde, PhD (School of Social Work)

 

 

Columbia University Postdocs form union with UAW, petition NLRB for election; first private university postdoc effort expands growing academic union movement

NEW YORK CITY — A majority of the 2,000 postdoctoral researchers at Columbia University have formed a union and today filed a petition initiating the certification process with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“After hundreds of conversations, meetings and town halls across the university over the last year, we are excited to take this important step toward establishing a union to improve the postdoc experience at Columbia,” said Alvaro Cuesta-Dominguez, a postdoc in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics.  “We hope to vote on unionization soon, so we can join thousands of our colleagues at public universities like the University of California who have negotiated improvements to pay, benefits and workplace rights as part of the UAW.”

If a majority vote yes for Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-UAW as their union in a subsequent NLRB election, organizers believe CPW-UAW would become the first certified union of postdocs at a private university in the United States.

“We have watched disappointingly as Columbia has refused to bargain with our graduate student worker colleagues over the last year,” said Medini Annavajhala, a postdoc in Infectious Diseases.  “But academic workers are hungry for a more just workplace, especially given the prevalence of sexual harassment and precarious pay and benefits, and so it is no surprise that despite Columbia’s efforts to discourage unionization, a majority of postdocs have now signed up to have a union.”

Postdocs are researchers who have earned a PhD and work under the supervision of a faculty member on a variety of research projects on major diseases like AIDS and Alzheimer’s, climate change, new technologies, and other critical areas.  As the core of the research workforce on campus, their work helps bring roughly one billion dollars in research grants and contracts to Columbia each year, making the university a major hub of academic innovation and an important engine of stimulus to the local economy.

“This has been an exciting week for working people and the UAW,” said Gary Jones, UAW President.  “In the same week that Missouri workers – including thousands of UAW members – voted overwhelmingly to reject right-to-work, 2,000 postdocs at Columbia University have now taken a major step toward joining the UAW.”

“We welcome these workers into the UAW community,” said Beverley Brakeman, Director of UAW Region 9A, which includes 37,000 members in New York City, New England and Puerto Rico.  “We sincerely hope Columbia embraces this opportunity to show its respect for the rights of workers to choose collective bargaining without unnecessary delays and in a free and fair manner.”

Academic workers across the Northeast have formed unions with the UAW in record numbers in recent years.  More than 15,000 graduate student workers, contingent faculty and postdocs have chosen UAW representation just since the end of 2013.  Most recently, 5,000 graduate workers at Harvard voted for the UAW in an April NLRB election and in July, the state labor board certified that a majority of the 150 postdocs at the University of Connecticut chose to unionize with the UAW.

The UAW now represents roughly 75,000 academic workers across the U.S., including postdocs at the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Washington, University of Massachusetts and University of Connecticut.  The UAW also represents hundreds of support staff at Columbia and more than 3,000 graduate student workers, who voted by an overwhelming 72 percent in favor of unionization in 2016, but the administration has refused to bargain with the graduate worker union based on the claim that “student employees” do not have union rights.

Tomorrow: March to End Family Separation and BBQ on Sunday

Join us as we rally with the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC-UAW) at the March to End Family Separation, tomorrow (Saturday, June 30th) at 10am.

Tomorrow, we will join thousands of New Yorkers in a national day of action to demand that Donald Trump and his administration stop separating kids from their parents while being detained and fight for families to be reunited.

We will meet up outside the J Z Chambers Street station at the southern end of Foley Square at 10:00AM.  Look out for the UAW signs! If you have any questions or can’t find us at the March, contact Corin at 202-380-5755.

We are also having a BBQ this Sunday, July 1st to celebrate the growing majority support for our union. Please let us know if you can make it.

The BBQ will be a good space to get to know one another in a different setting from our labs and offices, as well as talk about next steps in forming our union. We will be getting together this Sunday from 11-3pm, in Riverside Park at 10 Mile River Playground (W. 148th St. and Hudson River) Significant others and baby scientists are more than welcome, and one of the reasons we are organizing this outdoor event. Also feel free to bring food to share though we will have plenty of burgers and dogs.

All the best,

Members of Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

 

 

 

Oppose the Attack on International Scholars (Chinese visas and Muslim Ban)

Please take a minute to sign this petition from GWC-UAW to oppose the attack on international scholars.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s controversial Muslim Ban. This is a continuation of the attack on international scholars by Trump’s administration. On June 11th, new rules were introduced to limit Chinese student visas in STEM fields to as little as one year. Previously, most visas were issued for the maximum possible five year period.

Many members of our Union will be affected by these discriminatory and xenophobic policies, and it is important to stop this trend. The Graduate Workers of Columbia, in coordination with other UAW higher education local unions, like the postdocs at the University of California and graduate employees around the country, are circulating petitions to university presidents to take a stand against these discriminatory practices.

Please sign GWC-UAW’s petition to President Bollinger asking him and other University presidents around the country to resist this and communicate the harmful impacts of these policies to our state congressional delegation and to the Trump administration.

Protecting the rights of international workers is one of the many many reasons a majority of postdoctoral researchers support our union. Please join us in celebrating the work we have done so far by coming to a BBQ this Sunday.

Please let us know if you can make it to the BBQ this Sunday, July 1st, from 11-3pm, in Riverside Park at 10 Mile River Playground (W. 148th St. and Hudson River)

The BBQ will be a good space to get to know one another in a different setting from our labs and offices, as well as talk about next steps in forming our union. Significant others and baby scientists are more than welcome, and one of the reasons we are organizing this outdoor event. Also feel free to bring food to share though we will have plenty of burgers and dogs.

All the best,

Members of Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

 

 

 

Take the Postdoc Union Survey and Come to our BBQ

We are excited that a majority of postdoctoral researchers have signed up for our union and that we are moving towards filing for an election and winning a good contract at Columbia.

Please join hundreds of other postdoctoral researchers and take a minute to fill out the postdoc union bargaining survey.

Strong majority participation in the survey will also strengthen our union and enable us to have more power to negotiate a strong contract with the Columbia administration.

To celebrate the all the hard work we have put into building our union we are having a BBQ! Please let us know if you can make it.

The BBQ will be a good space to get to know one another in a different setting from our labs and offices, as well as talk about next steps in forming our union. We will be getting together this Sunday, July 1st, from 11-3pm, in Riverside Park at 10 Mile River Playground (W. 148th St. and Hudson River) Significant others and baby scientists are more than welcome, and one of the reasons we are organizing this outdoor event. Also feel free to bring food to share though we will have plenty of burgers and dogs.

All the best,

Members of Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

 

 

 

March in NYC Pride and Take the Bargaining Survey

This Sunday is NYC’s Pride parade, a celebration of the history of LGBTQ struggles in the U.S. We are excited to be marching with the Graduate Workers of Columbia and Congressman Jerry Nadler, meeting this Sunday, June 24th at West 15th and 8th ave at 10:45am to register as all participants will need a wristband to march in the parade.

Please RSVP to march with CPW-UAW in the Pride parade this year.

We have also been distributing a bargaining survey to develop the most representative bargaining goals possible. Postdoctoral researchers all across campus are taking the survey to give feedback on what issues we want to address in negotiations with Columbia.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the postdoc union bargaining survey.

A majority of us have signed up for CPW-UAW and we are moving closer to having a formal vote to establish our union. The more of us who fill out a survey, and the more of us who vote ‘yes’ when we have that union election, the more effectively we can negotiate a fair contract for all postdoctoral researchers at Columbia to address issues such as sexual harassment and secure workplace rights. Please complete the survey here.

All the best,

Members of Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

 

Join CPW-UAW at the March for Science

 

 

 

 

 

 

RSVP to join Columbia Postdoctoral Workers at the March for Science on April 14th.

Last year, we marched together in Washington, D.C. with the Columbia graduate employee union and other campus groups at the National March for Science, joining over 1 million people around the world to advocate for science and to encourage bi-partisan, evidence-based policy-making. This year, we will march in NYC to hold our elected officials accountable for enacting transparent policies rooted in scientific understanding.

Please join our union in supporting the March for Science NYC on Saturday, April 14th, at 11:30am in Washington Square Park, and for an evening of poster-making on Friday, April 13th! We will be marching in solidarity with the Graduate Workers of Columbia for the use of science to create better domestic and international policies that are equitable, fair, and empowering to all people.

Details:

Sign-Making Session: Friday, April 13th, 5-8pm, Black Building 14th floor conference room (BYOB ☺ )

March for Science NYC: Saturday, April 14th, 11:30am, in front of NYU’s Bobst Library, next to Washington Square Park.

We hope to see you all there!

P.S. – We were interviewed by the Columbia Daily Spectator for an article on gender inequality in the leadership of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Check it out here.

Best wishes,

Members of the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

 

Sign Petition Against Sexual Misconduct

Recent events across the country show that sexual harassment pervades the academic workplace as deeply as it does Hollywood or any other profession.  Please take a moment to sign this petition calling on the Columbia administration to address sexual misconduct and gender-based discrimination immediately.

Among the many reasons hundreds of postdocs and researchers have signed up for our union, we know that we can negotiate stronger protections and systems of recourse against sexual harassment.  At the University of Connecticut, for example, graduate assistants negotiated protections in their first contract, including a grievance process that has already enabled some women scientists to successfully address sexual harassment.

Best wishes,

Members of the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW-UAW)

Please click here if you want to get involved to help to win a strong first contract.

Best,

Members of the CPW-UAW Organizing Committee