ABOUT
ROCS-UAW is an organization by, of, and for Mount Sinai Researchers who want to unionize in order to improve our research and employment experience at Sinai. Our work not only benefits this institution and the economy, but also has positive impacts worldwide through groundbreaking medical research. We work in many different fields and have varied experiences, but our dedication to research unites us all.
I am an Instructor in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Climate Science, and I study the impact of neurotoxicant exposure on the brain. I believe forming a union is crucial for promoting gender equity at Mount Sinai. Many parents, including myself, struggle to balance parenting responsibilities with our work as full-time researchers due to insufficient family-friendly policies. A union will allow us to negotiate with Sinai for much-needed changes like greater support for those with families and small children, closing the gender pay gap, and stronger protections against harassment and discrimination.
After spending five years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Neurology Department, I was promoted to Senior Scientist. This journey required significant effort and dedication. With such extensive experience, promotions should ideally be more straightforward. Throughout this time, I’ve realized the importance of greater transparency regarding salary, benefits, and the overall compensation package. Clear and fair promotion criteria are crucial. The continuous hurdles faced by PhDs with five years of postdoctoral experience are unreasonable. We deserve better benefits that accurately reflect our experience, including a formal contract outlining all legal entitlements, such as PTO, personal and sick days, paid unused sick leave, paid unused time off, and a fair salary increase that reflects the nature of the promotion.
I have been working in Neurophysiology for over 20 years and thoroughly enjoy the work I do. This includes doing difficult physiological experiments which are a source of pride for me; I know the work I contribute to is reliable, reproducible, and informative. The expertise that makes this type of work possible has also taken me decades to accumulate, and takes time to pass on. I know the value of this expertise, and would appreciate greater recognition of its value by the Mount Sinai adminstration. I believe senior researchers should unionize in order to show Mount Sinai that the science we perform is valuable, that we are valuable, and that research as a whole at Mount Sinai is valuable. World-class research deserves exceptional compensation and benefits, and by unionizing we will have the power to push for that through a seat at the bargaining table.
As instructors and staff scientists, many of us hope to advance to more senior research positions with more job security. The path to career advancement at Mount Sinai is extremely uncertain and seems to differ by department or by lab, and general policies about promotion and professional development are opaque or nonexistent. Many of us are parents at this career stage, making it even more important to plan for our futures, which we have to do without clear timelines for promotions and salary raises. The ever increasing cost of living in New York City makes the problem even worse. Through collective bargaining, we can negotiate for better job security and clearer paths to promotion and professional development, so that we can thrive as researchers with less uncertainty about what comes next in our careers.
I’m an Instructor in the Department of Neuroscience. While I’ve been fortunate to have the strong support of my faculty mentors, the Instructor title is poorly defined relative to other positions. This lack of clarity has allowed some departments and PIs to underpay and under-support their most experienced lab members for far too long. I believe that a strong union can fight for higher salaries across the board, and better define the Instructor position. Sinai has already made great strides in supporting their postdoctoral fellows. Now is the time to provide equal care and support to their future faculty members.
Instructors and staff scientists play a fundamental role in maintaining Mount Sinai’s world-leading academic and scientific reputation. However, the existing managerial structure does not allow us scientists to participate in the decision-making process that determines working conditions within the organization, thus, negatively impacting the development of scientific advances, work-life balance, and employees’ mental health. We believe that forming a union will allow researchers to design a more efficient workplace, through bargaining and negotiation with upper management, that will foster scientific productivity resulting in better education for students and care for patients, while acknowledging our crucial contributions to the Mount Sinai community.
I was promoted from Postdoctoral Fellow to my current position as an Associate Scientist in 2021. Since then inflation has accelerated and the cost of living has surged in New York City, but my salary has remained unchanged. While Sinai increased the salary of postdocs to the highest in the country as a result of their unionization, there has not been a commensurate increase to the salary of senior researchers like myself. As a father of a one-year-old child and an international researcher, the vast majority of my salary goes to childcare, immigration, and housing. Not having a salary or benefits that account for these costs makes Mount Sinai less inclusive and distracts from senior researchers’ ability to do world-class biomedical research. I believe that forming a union will empower us to negotiate for improvements on these issues and fight for a more equitable, inclusive workplace that can attract and retain the very best researchers from around the world.
I believe a senior researchers union can help instructors and staff scientists work collaboratively towards improving conditions for us and those who will joining Mount Sinai in the future. By coming together as a union, we will be empowered to advocate for a better working environment, fair compensation, and enhanced professional development opportunities. Our collective voice in negotiations can drive positive changes and help Mount Sinai remain an attractive place to work for the world’s most talented scientists.
As an Associate Scientist, I am now making less than incoming postdocs at Mount Sinai whose unionization effort won them the highest minimum salary for postdocs in the country. I support senior researchers forming a union because it will give us the power to negotiate for a salary that recognizes our experience as well as fight for other basic rights and protections we currently lack. Given the postdocs’ wins as well as the increasingly expensive cost of living in New York City, it is long overdue for senior researchers to have the right to bargain over our working conditions.
As research instructors, we play a key role in advancing knowledge and fostering innovation. Yet, many of us face limited job security, unequal pay, and inadequate benefits. A union would allow us to advocate for fair wages, standardized contracts, and a more equitable academic environment. With the rising cost of living in NYC and the demands of our work, it’s crucial that we participate in decisions that affect our well-being. By uniting, we can create a more sustainable and inclusive academic community.
I am an associate scientist in the department of psychiatry at Mount Sinai studying mechanisms of gene regulation during human brain development. I believe that senior researchers in academia should have the right to unionize to collectively bargain for increases in salary, greater job security, and greater transparency and standardization in administrative policies, such as those regarding promotions and professional development. It is especially important for academic researchers living in expensive cities such as New York to be able to thrive economically and not worry about job stability while contributing to cutting edge biomedical research that advances science and our collective well-being.
Instructors like myself make essential contributions to research at Mount Sinai and should have a greater say in what our positions and paths forward in our careers look like. For that reason, I support senior researchers at Mount Sinai forming a union. Right now, the administration decides unilaterally what professional development looks like for us, and there is little incentive for them to make policies transparent or standardize requirements for promotions. With collective bargaining, Sinai would be legally obligated to negotiate with us as equals over this issue, and we could decide democratically what standards and policies should be put into place to best support our careers.
I support forming a Senior Researchers union to standardize pay and promotion at Mount Sinai. Staff scientists are critical to the existence of cutting-edge, well-funded academic research laboratories at Mount Sinai – we supervise postdocs, train research technicians, produce publications and acquire funding that allows our labs to excel and generates millions in revenue for the institution. Unfortunately, staff scientists’ pay is often not commensurate with our experience and the pathway to promotion or a stable position is not transparent or consistent across labs. The stratospheric cost of living in New York City only exacerbates the precarity of our positions. Negotiating for improvements on these issues through collective bargaining is the best way to continue attracting and retaining top staff scientists who maintain Mount Sinai’s distinguished reputation for performing biomedical research that advances the frontiers of human health.