Senior researchers from across campus delivering our open letter to the Sinai administration. Sinai responded to the letter, and we met with them this week.
We are excited to announce that with an overwhelming 80% of senior researchers having now signed authorization cards in support of Researchers Organizing Committee at Sinai-UAW as our Union, today we filed our petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to have an official vote to form our Union!
We also met with the Sinai administration earlier this week to discuss our request that they agree to a fair and timely election process. Read below for more details.
On February 10, we delivered an open letter signed by researchers from across Mount Sinai, asking the administration to meet with us about a fair and timely process for verifying our majority support through an official vote. Sinai informed us recently that they were willing to meet with us on Tuesday, March 11.
In the meeting, we shared some of the many reasons senior researchers support forming our union. We made clear that these issues are increasingly urgent due to attacks on science funding and international scholars, and reiterated our request that they agree to a fair and efficient election process.
Sinai acknowledged that we have a legal right to have an election, but chose not to respond to our request during the meeting, citing the unpredictability caused by attacks on public research funding. We pointed out that instability around funding and visa processes affect all of us at Sinai, causing particular stress to members of our workforce in ways that negatively impact our ability to do quality work, and threatening to make it more difficult to retain highly-trained and specialized researchers.
We also noted that senior researchers at Sinai have been working to address this instability by fighting back against funding cuts, including speaking up at rallies, calling our elected representatives, sending letters, and organizing as part of a National Day of Action. At the national level, academic workers in the United Auto Workers (UAW) have engaged in lobbying members of Congress and the senate to protect research, and the UAW was a national co-sponsor of the Stand Up for Science actions that took place in thirty two cities last Friday.
We stressed that we would much prefer to work together with Sinai to advocate for secure research funding, instead of waste time time debating whether senior researchers should be allowed to unionize.
Senior researchers at Sinai have participated in numerous actions to defend public research funding over the past several months.
While the Sinai administration was not able to give a definitive answer on how they intend to respond to our petition, we were encouraged by their willingness to meet with us to discuss this topic. Now that we have filed with the NLRB, we anticipate continuing this discussion with Sinai over the coming days.
While we sincerely hope that Sinai does not choose to oppose our union, there are many strong examples we can look to of academic workers overcoming opposition from their employers in order to unionize. The challenges we face as a scientific community in the current moment only make us more determined to gain the protected voice we can have with a union.
We will keep everyone updated on our next steps, including Sinai’s response to our petition with the NLRB.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts,
Elza Rechtman
Instructor, Environmental Medicine and Public Health
ROCS-UAW Organizing Committee