December 6, 2022
At today’s bargaining session, Sinai proposed an across the board raise of 3% to all currently employed postdoctoral fellows effective January 8th, which our bargaining committee agreed to with some modifications. This initial raise is a direct result of our collective efforts to form our union and organize for improvements on postdoc issues, and will be the first across the board increase since 2018. Nothing in the agreement precludes PIs from providing additional salary raises for the coming year.
While we welcome Sinai’s acknowledgement of the economic difficulties for Postdocs, we also made it clear that 3% is a start but not enough, and that we intend to make more ambitious proposals on economic issues to address the historically high cost of living in NYC, including salary and housing pressures. You can read the agreement here.
We went on to ask more questions about Sinai’s proposals regarding Appointment Security and Appointments & Reappointments, and reiterated our concerns about how their proposal would, among other things, (1) limit appointment lengths to one year, especially for international postdocs who would have to leave the country for visa renewal annually, and (2) limit the total amount of time at Mount Sinai to three years, with some exceptions. Sinai stated that they wanted to ensure a faster promotion of postdocs to faculty positions but did not offer any explanation on how the limits would guarantee the promotion of postdocs.
At the end of the session, Sinai made counter proposals on Employment Files, Union Security, Health and Safety, Intellectual Property, Successorship, Appointment and Reappointments, Workspace and Materials, Grievance and Arbitration, and Job Posting. We countered on Union-Management Committee, which we expect is close to being a tentative agreement, but ran out of time to make the additional counter proposals we had prepared.
Overall, this was a productive session, but showed that we need more dates and times for bargaining to continue to move forward in a timely manner.
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any thoughts or comments.
Yajing Xu
Neuroscience
SPOC-UAW Bargaining Committee