Click here to RSVP for our upcoming Bargaining Session on Wednesday, 8/13!
We want to take a moment to commend our community for making Wednesday’s Picket to Protect Science a huge success. Hundreds of postdocs from across departments at Weill Cornell came together to make a powerful statement to the WCM administration: it’s time to stop trying to deny us basic protections in our contract, and start working together to defend scientific research at WCM.
At our picket line, we started by hearing from organizers on the importance of showing WCM that we are ready to fight for the fair and equitable contract that we deserve.
“We’ve been fighting for a fair contract for well over a year now… the biggest thing that’s stopping us from achieving the final agreement is WCM insisting on a clause that would strip us of the exact conditions we spent a year fighting for.”
After these inspiring words, we started picketing! At first the picket line was so long we didn’t have enough space on the block, so we formed a second line on the other side of 1300 York. We held up signs and shared chants – check out a few of them below:
“Force Majeure – will make us poor – No more – FORCE MAJEURE!”
After nearly an hour of picketing, we came back together to hear from one of our unionized colleagues at Mount Sinai, who spoke about how it took a strike to win their first union contract, and their commitment to join us on the picket line if WCM continues to refuse to make progress.
“In the current political climate, with international scholars being targeted by the federal government, and while we are all fighting together against the attacks on federal funding, it’s shameful that Cornell is choosing to try to use this to weaken job security for postdocs… If Cornell does not reach a fair agreement, we are also ready to fight alongside you as we did during our strike until you finally win the contract you deserve.”
Finally, we wrapped up our practice picket by hearing from a member of our elected Bargaining Committee, Dagan, who spoke about the importance of WCM standing with postdocs in our effort to fight cuts to federal research funding, rather than continuing to place the burden of future cuts on researchers.
“We have also been doing everything we can to fight back against the attempted cuts by the Trump administration alongside tens of thousands of other researchers in the UAW, and it’s working – but these efforts would be much more effective if we were able to work together with WCM to fight attacks on research and international workers, instead of fighting each other over whether postdocs should have basic rights in our contract.”
Less than a day after our picket, WCM sent out another email about our negotiations. In the email, WCM claims to have agreed to “significant limits” on their ability to use Force Majeure and to do layoffs, and suggests that “the Union” is delaying the process by not agreeing to include some version of Force Majeure in our contract. However, none of WCM’s modifications to their proposal change the fact that it would let them unilaterally implement changes to our collective bargaining agreement, including reducing our salaries, benefits, and protections. That is the fundamental purpose of the article.
It has taken many years of organizing by academic workers to raise the floor for postdoc salaries and other workplace rights. Postdocs across campus have made clear that we don’t want to go backwards by including a provision that could immediately reduce our standard of living. Instead we’ve made proposals that engage with WCM’s desire for a way of dealing with financial difficulties, including a Layoff provision, without sacrificing our need for a decent quality of life. We also know that the impacts of these changes would be felt disproportionately by the most precarious members of our community, including international postdocs and parents.
We should all be proud of what we’re building together and remember that we are doing all the right things to fight for the protections and rights that postdocs deserve.
As always, please RSVP if you can join us for our upcoming bargaining session, Wednesday, August 13th. The more postdocs attending bargaining, the more clearly we can convey the urgency of our demand for workplace protections and job security.
Please reach out to us with any thoughts or questions.
In solidarity,
Kaitlin Murtha
Postdoctoral Associate in Cell Biology
on behalf of the WCMPU-UAW Organizing Committee
