We’re Voting Yes
NYU Postdoctoral Researchers: Vote Union YES on Sept 30th and Oct 1st!
Voting Information
- Polling Days: Wednesday, Sept 30th and Thursday, Oct 1st
- Polling Times: 9AM-7PM
- Polling Locations:
- Eligible Voters: Postdoctoral Associates and Postdoctoral Fellows
We have a clear choice in this election.
We have a clear choice in this election. Voting “YES” means NYU administrators would have a legal obligation to bargain with our elected postdoctoral representatives over pay, benefits and workplace rights, and to secure any agreements on improvements or maintaining current benefits in a legally binding and enforceable contract. We will be joining over 100,000 UAW academic employees across the country, and close to 7,000 UAW workers at NYU, in working together to make research workplaces more just, fair, and equitable.
After hundreds and hundreds of conversations with our fellow postdoctoral researchers at NYU over the past few years, we’ve seen that we share many of the same challenges regardless of our department or school. These include increasing insecurity for international workers, unpredictable salary increases that don’t match the increased cost of living in New York City, and pay and benefits that lag behind peer institutions, and make it more difficult for us to pursue sustainable careers in Science. These challenges add unnecessary stress to the postdoc experience and make it more difficult to focus on doing quality research.
Joining Together to Improve Our Working Conditions & Protect Research Funding
Right now, NYU administrators decide unilaterally if, how, and when to address problems affecting postdoctoral researchers. Additionally, the various attempts at funding cuts by the Trump administration and unprecedented attack on biomedical research in the United States, could have serious and long-lasting negative impacts on US research. These attacks on science provide even more reason for us to unionize.
With collective bargaining, we will be able to meet NYU at the bargaining table as equals. With strong participation and support in our vote we can negotiate a contract that not only improves our pay, benefits, and workplace rights, but also ensures the security and stability that enables us to do quality research. Through a union, we would be able to build a more secure and connected community of researchers at NYU and also be able to project our voices beyond our immediate workplace. No matter what the institution’s financial situation, it’s better to have a seat at the table in decisions that affect our working conditions.
By unionizing with the UAW we are also joining with tens of thousands of other higher education workers across the country who are fighting against cuts to public research funding. During the first Trump administration, UAW members mounted a joint campaign to call for increased research funding in light of COVID-19, to support the ability of universities to emerge from the crisis and continue performing leading-edge research. UAW was also a national sponsor of the March for Science in 2017, and successfully fought to turn back the grad tax.
In hundreds of conversations, town halls, happy hours, and other meetings, postdoctoral researchers have already identified some of the common priorities that we could address through a collectively bargained contract. For these reasons, we encourage our colleagues to vote “union yes” on September 30th and October 1st.
Forming a union will ensure we can bargain for benefits comparable to those at peer institutions where fellow postdocs have already unionized, including strengthening much-needed protections for international researchers like myself. I look forward to joining over 3,000 postdocs in the NY area to represent ourselves at our workplace.
Fair workplace standards enable researchers to prioritize our research
As Postdoctoral Researchers, our work powers NYU research mission — we make valuable contributions that have earned New York University international renown and bring in the funding that supports day-to-day operations. We do it with salaries that have not kept pace with generationally-high inflation and do not reflect the expertise we bring to NYU every year.
In 2020, postdocs at Columbia approved their first union contract and the highest minimum salaries for postdocs in New York City, building on these gains when they renegotiated their contract in 2023, with postdocs winning up to 24% raises over the life of the contract. Also in 2023, postdocs at Mount Sinai won the highest minimum salaries in the country for postdoctoral researchers, and were followed in 2024 by postdocs at Caltech. These gains have helped raise the standard for other major research institutions across the country, leading to successful efforts to unionize by postdocs at institutions like Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. It is now time for us to come together and demand salaries and other benefits that reflect the value of our contributions, and secure them in a contract, so we can focus on the quality of our research instead of how to make ends meet in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
How have other researchers used a union contract to improve compensation?
Sinai Postdocs celebrate 24% pay boost in one of the world’s most expensive cities
“How Unionization Improves the Mount Sinai Postdoc Experience”
Contract Gains for Columbia Associate Research Scientists and Postdocs
Postdocs and Graduate Student Workers at Caltech Won Major Improvements
See what other unionized researchers have won in their contracts here.
NYU is a world class research institution whose productivity depends on postdoc researchers, yet we currently have no means of bargaining for better conditions. I support a union because it is the best mechanism for securing our rights and benefits as workers. By unionizing we can guarantee that these are negotiated, protected, and applied equally across departments and schools. Supporting a union not only means betterment of my job, but also for many other researchers in the future.
Continuing to Build a Movement at NYU and beyond
More than 100,000 academic employees across the U.S. have already chosen to join UAW. This includes researchers at Columbia University, The Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medicine, Johns Hopkins, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Harvard University, Caltech, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, University of California, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Washington, among others. By uniting together, academic employees are driving up standards in higher education and building a powerful voice for research scientists, postdocs, graduate workers, and non-tenure track faculty.
Here at NYU, thousands of fellow members of the university community have formed unions with UAW. Last spring, over 900 contract faculty with Contract Faculty United – UAW won a first contract that included groundbreaking anti-bullying language that is reflected in a campus-wide policy, a million dollar childcare fund to reimburse costs, and an X increase to minimum salaries. We look forward to continuing to build a local movement with all our colleagues at NYU to help advance our rights and increase our collective voice.
In June 2022, Postdoctoral Fellows at Mount Sinai voted by an overwhelming 90% in favor of unionizing with UAW, despite significant efforts by Mount Sinai to convince them to vote “no”. They went on to negotiate a historic first contract, which they ratified by 98%, raising standards for postdocs across the US. Since then, our colleagues have rigorously enforced their contractual rights, while continuing to organize around important issues for researchers.
Together, we drive the vast majority of the research at NYU, and by forming our own union, we can more effectively coordinate in order to build a stronger voice for all of us working in labs at the University.
Expanding our collective voice as international researchers
Like many others across the country, hundreds of us who make an immense contribution at NYU are international workers. As a global University, we help represent a diverse and wide range of backgrounds and nationalities. However, the recent climate around international work, and attempted restrictions to visas we rely on to perform our critical research, has made it more clear than ever that international postdocs need a strong collective voice to continue advocating for our rights at the workplace, and at a national level.
Read more about international researchers organizing with UAW here.
As an international worker, I believe that having a postdoc union will help us gain job stability, as our whole livelihood is dependent on having valid work status. With a union, we can collectively bargain over stronger rights as international visa holders.
Our research is stronger when everyone can contribute.
Pregnancy, childbirth and adoption should be occasions for celebration – without unnecessary stress caused by having to return to work too soon after giving birth, or concerns about unstable benefits, housing, or visa status. Unfortunately, this kind of stress is all too prevalent for NYU researchers raising children. More women are obtaining Ph.D.s in science than ever before, but those women — often due to discrimination and unequal pressures on early-career researchers choosing to have a family — are far more likely than men to leave academia before obtaining tenure at a college or university.
Under-representation of women in senior roles has been a longstanding problem within academia, and that’s why winning significant improvements in this area in a union contract is so important.
Read how other researchers have unionized and made their employers more family friendly.
Why Mount Sinai postdoc parents voted “YES” for a more family-friendly research community
Columbia graduate workers win fully-paid dependent health insurance
Sinai postdocs won an emergency support fund that can be used for childcare expenses
UW postdocs won the creation of a new caregiver fund
Columbia postdocs protected and improved a childcare benefit upt o $5,000 per year
UC Postdocs won a dedicated childcare subsidy after years of opposition from the UC administration
Together we can make NYU more equitable and inclusive.
Inequalities — including those based on gender, race, sexual orientation and immigration status — continue to create barriers for many of the most talented to enter the academic and scientific workforce. And existing systems of recourse for problems like discrimination, harassment, and bullying too often fail and can take years. A recent survey conducted by Nature found that 1 in 5 grad students faced gender or racial-based discrimination, and another study found that early-career researchers from abroad are more likely to be threatened with termination.
Though much work remains to be done, researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and faculty in the UAW have helped make progress on many of these issues, both at the bargaining table and in policy advocacy through the UAW. At the University of Connecticut, for example, a graduate assistant worked with her union to successfully resolve a major sexual assault and harassment complaint in three months, whereas complaints of gender and race-based discrimination against Sinai leadership have remained unresolved years later. By forming a union, we can negotiate for strong, survivor-centered protections and hold Penn accountable.
At other major research institutions like Columbia, NYU, the University of Washington, the University of California, and WPI, unionized researchers have won strong protections like enforceable timelines, union representation, protection from retaliation, and the option to appeal to a neutral third-party arbitrator for cases of harassment, discrimination, and abusive conduct. With a union, we have more power to be heard, to determine our right to a safe and healthy workplace, and to ensure that our rights are enforced.
UConn Graduate Student Union Helps Handle Sexual Harassment
“Workplace Bullying in Higher Education is Rampant. We’re Fighting Back”
UC International Postdoc Takes on Pregnancy Discrimination and Wins
We’re Voting Yes
As postdoctoral researchers in departments and disciplines across NYU, we encourage our colleagues to join us voting Union ‘YES’ on September 30th and October 1st!
As postdocs from departments across New York University, we are excited to have the opportunity to vote YES for our union. In doing so, we would join over 100,000 unionized UAW academic workers across the US – including over three thousand unionized postdoctoral researchers in New York City – who have already come together to improve their experience and create a more equitable, inclusive, and fair scientific community.
As postdocs, we play a critical role in driving the world-class research conducted at NYU. However, without collective bargaining, NYU postdocs have faced unreliable salary increases that lag far behind the rising cost of living in NYC and the minimums established by our unionized peers; lack of fair recourse in cases of discrimination or mistreatment; and insufficient support for international researchers in a time when it is most critical. This uncertainty unnecessarily hinders our ability to focus on quality research.
If a majority of us vote “yes”, the NYU administration would be obligated to bargain with postdocs over salaries, benefits and workplace rights, and to commit any agreements into a binding contract, similar to thousands of other NYU employees that already bargain collectively as UAW members.
Now more than ever, it’s important we have an organized political voice in higher education and in science. We therefore encourage our colleagues to vote ‘yes’ for NYURUP-UAW as our union. We look forward to bargaining a fair union contract with the NYU administration that improves our working conditions and our lives, and to joining our fellow contract faculty (CFU-UAW), graduate teaching assistants (GSOC-UAW), adjunct faculty (ACT-UAW), and resident advisors (SWAN-UAW) as part of an active local movement of unionized members of the NYU community.
Signed,
Laura Barrero Guevara, Postdoctoral Associate, Biology
Rishi Bhandia, Postdoctoral Associate, Physics
Megh Bhatt, Postdoctoral Associate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Garrett Blair, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Neural Science
Mac Calvert, Postdoctoral Associate, Biology
Stephen Caron, Postdoctoral Associate, Environmental Studies
Daniel Collins, Postdoctoral Fellow, Computer Science
Carlos Correa, Postdoctoral Associate, Psychology
Marco De Vincenzi, Postdoctoral Associate, Computer Science & Engineering
Maggie DeMaegd, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Neural Science
Mohit Dhiman, Postdoctoral Associate, Chemistry
Paz Duran De Haro, Postdoctoral Associate, Molecular Pathobiology
Setiembre Elorza, Postdoctoral Associate, Biology
Aleksei Emelianov, Postdoctoral Associate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Renaud Falga, Postdoctoral Associate, Math
Florent Fessler, Postdoctoral Associate, Chemistry
Theo Gibbs, Postdoctoral Fellow, Biology
Gily Ginosar, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Neural Science
Aleyah Goins, Postdoctoral Associate, Translational Research Center
Dorothee Guenther, Postdoctoral Associate, Center for Neural Science
Lena Hunt, Postdoctoral Associate, Environmental Studies
Satyam Khanal, Postdoctoral Associate, Chemistry
Amber Kline, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Neural Science
Yiliu Li, Postdoctoral Associate, Physics
Jonathan Mercado Reyes, Postdoctoral Associate, Molecular Pathobiology
Mainak Mondal, Postdoctoral Associate, Math
Brock Nelson, Postdoctoral Associate, Chemistry
Xiyu Pan, Postdoctoral Associate, Technology Management and Innovation
Kritanjan Polley, Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry
Wenzer Qin, Postdoctoral Fellow, Physics
Adithya Rajagopalan Echambadi, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Neural Science
Isaura Rosas Reinhold, Postdoctoral Associate, Biology
Jayoung Ryu, Postdoctoral Associate, Math
Fanghao Shi, Postdoctoral Associate, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Badr Sokrat, Postdoctoral Associate, Molecular Pathobiology
Harshit Tiwari, Postdoctoral Associate, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Hannah Waterman, Postdoctoral Associate, Biology
Nathaniel Woznicki, Postdoctoral Associate, Psychology
Jiarong Wu, Postdoctoral Associate, Math
Yuan Yuan, Postdoctoral Associate, Math