This week, Sinai postdocs met in working groups to discuss Sinai’s responses to our proposals on parental leave, childcare, compensation, international researcher rights, and tax assistance. Sign up for a working group here!
RSVP for our 31st Bargaining Session, tomorrow (10/20) at 12pm!
In yesterday’s bargaining session, Sinai responded to one of the fourteen economic articles we proposed last week, Compensation. Sinai made some progress, proposing a minimum salary of $67,500, and signaling their willingness for further movement, while expressing their desire to “manage our expectations”. We informed Sinai that while we appreciated their continued movement, their proposal was far from sufficient, especially without any guaranteed cost of living increases, and only a 1% experience-based raise. There is more work to be done, but after nearly five years with no increases to minimum salaries, even this movement is a testament to the power postdocs have built throughout our campaign.
We also presented counter proposals in an attempt to reach an agreement on non-economic proposals. First, we proposed a “Contract Enforcement” package in which we made significant movement by agreeing not to call for a strike during the contract term, in exchange for a strong and expedited Grievance and Arbitration process.
Next, we presented a second package proposal with Prohibition from Discrimination & Harassment and Policies and Procedures. We highlighted the importance of protections against harassment and bullying. This is a widespread problem in academia with an overwhelming number of academics experiencing (84%) or witnessing (59%) abusive supervision.
We ended the session by explaining our position on some of our economics proposals, which we sent after we ran out of time at last week’s bargaining session. Unfortunately, we again ran out of time to present all of our economic proposals.
You can find all of our and Sinai’s proposals here. Our next bargaining session will be tomorrow (Friday), October 20th. Please RSVP here to attend
In solidarity,
Pablo Knobel
Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health
SPOC-UAW Bargaining Committee