On Wednesday, September 11th, we had our twelfth bargaining session with WCM. We made progress on several non-economic articles, including an additional tentative agreement (TA) on Intellectual Property. In this article, in case of disputes over Principal Investigatorship on grants, we accepted WCM’s proposal to modify the grievance process to include the option to take the case to a mutually agreed-upon, third party expert to issue a binding decision, and also accepted their language around open access fees for publication of scholarly works. In addition, WCM countered on Academic Freedom to ensure that the provisions put forth in the article will comply with WCM policies and procedures, local and federal law, which we countered at the table to make minor changes in language. You can track our progress and check out the other TAs we’ve reached so far at this link.
We also had further discussion with WCM about Postdoctoral Employees who were terminated within their first 4 months at WCM, which WCM has proposed as a probationary period. All of the cases WCM shared with were either voluntary resignations or could be addressed through just cause. This information only supports our argument that the probationary period proposed by WCM is unnecessary and would undermine protections won by other postdocs across the country. We remain committed to rejecting this provision.
Lastly, we hope to propose economic articles in the near future. On August 27th, we put in another Request for Information (RFI) on Housing, which WCM has yet to get back to us on. We expressed to WCM that responses to requests for information on economic topics are helpful to us in developing proposals on these topics. WCM responded that they will provide us with a response within the week. Please join us at our Bargaining Session on Tuesday, September 23rd (click to RSVP) to hear more about our upcoming proposals, which are based on extensive input from the Postdoctoral community in the form of bargaining surveys, town halls, and focus groups.
Finally, to hear more about our progress with bargaining and what lies ahead, please join us for a union happy hour at 6 pm next Thursday, 9/19 at The Hunterian (413 E 70th St)!
If you’d like to get more involved in organizing efforts, reach out to organizing@wcmpostdocunion.org.
In solidarity,
Krithika Karthigeyan
WCMPU-UAW Bargaining Committee
Summary of tentative agreements:
Intellectual Property: Provides protected rights to authorship and intellectual property and puts forth clear criteria on authorship and principal investigatorship and disclosures of conflicts of interest.