RSVP for tomorrow’s bargaining session at 9am!
We had another strong day of picketing today, with support from other postdocs around the city, fellow Sinai employees, and community members. Check out tomorrow’s schedule here and a bargaining update below:
Narrowing the issues at the bargaining table:
In a major effort to bridge some of the remaining gaps in contract negotiations, we presented a counterproposal today that reasserts our core priorities on Childcare and Housing, significantly closes the distance on Compensation, and reaches agreement on Insurance Benefits and Leaves of Absence. You can find the package here.
Housing: One of the reasons we are striking is over Sinai’s failure to provide timely information regarding housing, limiting our ability to bargain over access to affordable housing. Sinai housing officials have yet to meet with us, despite our request for a meeting sent months ago. Today, their team assured us that they would provide responses at tomorrow’s session at 9AM and that the housing officials plan to attend. In our counterproposal, we reasserted our demand for 4 guaranteed years of housing, on par with other Upper East Side institutions.
Childcare: We also reasserted our childcare demand of $5000 per year. We pointed out how our Childcare proposal was modeled on the benefit won by Columbia postdocs. Unionized postdocs at institutions like UW and UC have also won childcare benefits in their contracts. Sinai’s team acknowledged for the first time that our proposal matches Columbia’s and that gender equity is important to address, but could not present clear reasons for why they have rejected our demands in this article.
Compensation: To facilitate reaching agreement on Childcare, we accepted much of Sinai’s proposal on Compensation. We did so in recognition of Sinai’s move to increase minimums, experience-based increases, and increases to the minimum salary for inflation. We made a minor clarification to make sure that Sinai’s proposed increase in year 3 to allow for retirement contributions would be included in each postdoc’s salary.
Attestation Form: We also returned a counter on the Attestation form that Sinai has been circulating. We maintain our position that Sinai made a unilateral and therefore illegal decision to ask postdocs to fill out daily attestations tracking our work.
In solidarity,
SPOC-UAW Bargaining Committee