Yes. Until this year, Columbia has had an annual research revenue of over 1 billion dollars from the federal government. For the last several years, Columbia has left several hundreds of millions of those dollars unspent. In addition, in public tax filings, Columbia reports that over 8 billion dollars out of its $14.8 billion dollar endowment is “unrestricted.” For more information about Columbia’s financial situation, see this report from our union. As the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, noted in a recent New York Times op-ed, “ways can be found in an emergency to deploy even parts of the endowment that have been earmarked by their donors for other uses.”

Columbia is not forced to lay off workers by their financial situation. The administration is making a moral choice with our livelihoods, careers, and the security of our jobs in the balance. This is a miscalculation. As researchers, we are the core workers that implement the research priorities of the University and through our fellowships, grants, and preliminary data have supported the operating budget, mission, and brand of the university as we win federal funding.

We know that when a majority of us come together to demand something of our employer, they listen. While bargaining our last contract in 2023, a majority of postdocs and ARS voted to authorize a strike because Columbia was not agreeing to a fair contract, and Columbia responded by raising our salaries to what were at the time the highest in the country. After a majority of postdocs went on strike at Mount Sinai, the University responded by agreeing to the first housing article in a postdoc union country, greater support for parents, and what is currently the highest postdoc salary in the country. 

Additionally, Columbia has already created a Stabilization Fund to support training grants that were canceled. This is a partial solution and we are demanding that it be scaled up to all postdocs and associate research scientists impacted by the funding cuts. 

Columbia is required by our union contract to provide funding through to the end of our appointments, even where the underlying funding was terminated. Our contract ensures that you cannot be fired outright without “just cause.” In both of these cases, Columbia has already been pooling the university’s vast financial resources to support specific student workers and postdocs. Meeting our demand is a natural extension of actions the university has already taken.

The petition, signed by hundreds of postdocs at Columbia support research, is internal to Columbia and is directed toward the office of the provost. Elected stewards and organizers in our union will see who has signed the petition, which will be used to direct our efforts to reach our coworkers.

International workers have the same rights to participate in union activity as US citizens, and are protected from reprisals by Columbia by law. International researchers have been instrumental in organizing and running our union, the Mount Sinai postdoc union (UAW Local 4100) the University of California postdocs union (UAW Local 5810), and many others. Unionization can result in protections that are especially valuable for international academic employees.

Especially now, when international scholars are under attack and in an even more precarious position due to appointments relying on visa status, it’s more important than ever that we fight for our institution to provide more support for international researchers.

By demanding central funding from Columbia (salaries paid by Columbia rather than from grants), you help your lab! Many department chairs have indicated their intention of funding students, postdocs, and ARSs in the wake of cancelled grants. Currently, because our union contract ensures that workers cannot be laid off without “just cause,” Columbia central funding is already paying salaries for workers whose research funding has been terminated. There is considerable pressure, not just from CPW but from faculty and department leadership, to win central funding from Columbia. If Columbia offsets the burden of these cuts, faculty will be better able to focus on cutting-edge, rigorous research rather than research budgeting or layoffs.