Last Tuesday, we had our 4th bargaining sessions for Instructors and Scientists with the Sinai administration. Our last session before that was on 12/1, more than a month prior.
We were disappointed to see that Sinai’s counter proposals on Job Posting, Workload, and Workspace and Materials went far below the equivalent provisions in the postdoc contract, and would result in lower standards at Sinai in these areas. When we asked the Sinai administration why they were seeking to weaken these rights in our contract, Sinai suggested that they may try to make similar changes to the postdoc’s contract when they begin bargaining again this year.
We believe strongly that both teams should be seeking ways to reach agreements with urgency, using pre-existing agreements at Sinai as a guide, rather than trying to weaken all of our rights at a time when we are facing unprecedented attacks from the federal government. A majority of senior researchers recently signed an open letter calling on Sinai to bargain intensively and avoid unnecessary delays.
Sinai’s efforts to weaken our rights as researchers seem particularly out of place coming in the same week that unionized researchers in the UAW spent significant time advocating for state-based research funding that would directly benefit Sinai and other medical schools, through the proposed Empire Biomedical Research Institute. Last Friday, unionized researchers in the UAW organized a statewide town hall that brought together more than 650 attendees, 17 state lawmakers and staff, and Sinai faculty and administrator speakers, just a few days before traveling to Albany in force to urge legislators to provide more support for medical schools in New York.
We would much prefer to be working together with the Sinai administration in a moment like this, rather than wasting valuable time and resources arguing over whether we deserve the basic protections that our postdoc colleagues already have. This creates unnecessary obstacles to collaboration on shared priorities that ultimately make it harder to respond to growing threats to science.
More than 650 New Yorkers attended our Statewide Town Hall for Science Funding last Friday.
Click the image to hear some from Samarth’s remarks at the Town Hall highlights.
UAW researchers from across the city and state went to Albany on Monday and Tuesday to lobby for state-based science funding for medical schools like Sinai.
Researchers from Sinai and other NY medical schools talked with state legislators at the AFL-CIO labor federation breakfast about the Empire Biomedical Research Institute.
Towards the end of last Tuesday’s sessions, we proposed three new proposals as a package: Employment Records, Health and Safety, and Travel. If Sinai does not accept these three proposals as they are, we can withdraw them and make a different set of proposals. In a major effort to try to reach mutually satisfactory agreements on these topics quickly, we chose not to attempt to improve on the equivalent articles from the postdoc contract in this package. We hope Sinai takes a similar approach by agreeing to this package of proposals, rather than trying to weaken the articles in them.
We ended the session by asking Sinai about scheduling. We have been bargaining for more than 3 months, but due to Sinai’s teams’ schedules we have only been able to meet with them four times for each unit, for 1-2 hours each session. This pace is causing significant delays. After some discussion, the administration said they would review their most recent scheduling proposal. After the session they agreed to one additional meeting in February, for 1.5 hours each, at a time we are available.
Our next session will take place on January 30. If you would like to observe the session, please click here to RSVP.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts,
Samarth Hegde
Instructor, Immunological Sciences
ROCS-UAW Bargaining Committee
Ting-Jiun Chen
Assistant Scientist, Neuroscience
ROCS-UAW Bargaining Committee
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