A VOICE FOR RESEARCHERS
Since the first group of Postdoctoral scholars formed a union in 2010, higher education research has seen a surge of worker organizing that has few parallels in 21st-century America. By coming together to bargain for better working conditions, early-career researchers have begun to make up for two decades’ worth of stagnant wages and decaying working conditions.
“As a public institution, the NIH has a crucial role to play in ensuring researchers have a say over their working conditions. We call on the NIH to require employers to remain neutral when workers decide to form a union and to engage in collective bargaining without delay and in good faith as a condition of receiving federal funding.”
– From our letter to the NIH
The NIH can help this encouraging development by conditioning grant funding on employer neutrality—meaning that employers should allow workers at a particular institution to decide for themselves whether or not to form a union. Without action by the NIH, many institutions will continue to fight union campaigns delaying long-needed salary increases and leading to an increased brain drain toward the corporate world.