For a fun and less technical discussion of everything below, please join us at Faculty Club for another UPROR Happy Hour today (Thursday, April 24th)! We’ll be there from 6:15 PM onward.
Last Wednesday, UPROR-UAW had our third bargaining session with the Rockefeller administration (the “University”). We presented three counterproposals to the University on “Preamble,” “Recognition,” and “Union-Management Committee,” and proposed two new articles: “Training” and “Workspace and Materials.” The University also proposed four new articles: “Funding from Other Sources,” “Grievance and Arbitration,” “Management and Academic Rights,” and “No Strike – No Lockout.” Together we made progress on the articles proposed at our last bargaining session and hope to soon achieve several Tentative Agreements (“TA”s). A TA means final language for an article, contingent upon reaching agreement on an entire Collective Bargaining Agreement (“CBA” or “Agreement”) and ratification of such Agreement by both Parties (the Union and the University).
Today’s update will provide the purpose of each of these new articles, along with a brief explanation of the proposal’s current status in our negotiations. It also includes information about the current proposed language for previously proposed articles. To see the proposed articles in their entirety, see the linked articles below.
Counterproposals
This Article defines the entities who are making and entering into a Collective Bargaining Agreement, and the shorthand terminology used to refer to them throughout the contract — the University and the Union.
This Article memorializes the National Labor Relations Board’s certification of our bargaining unit in the contract by defining the scope of the bargaining unit and its exclusive bargaining representative. We have achieved broad agreement on this Article, as well as the Preamble, in the recent bargaining session and are optimistic that we will reach Tentative Agreements soon.
This Article describes the Union-Management Committee (“UMC”), a fundamental committee that brings the Parties together to ensure that the contract is implemented in a timely manner and administered successfully.
In the previous bargaining session, the University insisted that their time and resources were too limited to commit to what we had proposed. We made headway toward agreement by increasing the number of UMC committee members and the frequency of its meetings. We will continue to push for an appropriately sized committee that can meet often enough to resolve issues when they arise. Our aim is to reach an agreement on an article that ensures the University and the Union can utilize the UMC as a space where the Parties can have ongoing and proactive discussions to avoid formal grievance proceedings when they are not necessary.
New articles
Purpose – This Article asserts that the University will provide paid time for and pay costs associated with work-related training, orientations, workshops, scientific meetings, and courses.
Status – We have submitted this proposal to the University for consideration.
Purpose – This Article describes the provision of necessary workspace, facilities, equipment, resources, and materials for the conduct of research and ensures timely reimbursement when Unit Members are required to pay for these materials, equipment, space, or services out of pocket. It also asserts compliance with common workplace safety considerations, such as the NIOSH ergonomics guidelines, in new and existing workspaces to prevent Unit Member injury or illness.
Status – We have submitted this proposal to the University for consideration.
Purpose – This Article would constitute an agreement by both Parties not to engage in certain types of labor practices while our contract is in effect, typically strikes (the collective stoppage of work activity by employees) and lockouts (when the employer refuses to permit employees to work).
Status – This Article was proposed by the University at the end of the bargaining session, and we will be reviewing the proposal in consultation with members and in relation to the contract terms we are able to reach with the University over the course of negotiations.
Management and Academic Rights:
Purpose – This Article outlines which rights remain at the discretion of the University.
Status – This Article was proposed by the University at the end of the bargaining session, and we will be reviewing the proposal in consultation with members and in relation to the contract terms we are able to reach with the University over the course of negotiations.
Purpose – This Article describes the procedure by which grievances — formal complaints regarding violations of contract provisions — may be filed and through which resolutions may be reached. This is a core article of every union contract that ensures binding resolutions to contract violations are reached quickly and fairly.
Status – This Article was proposed by the University at the end of the bargaining session, and we will be reviewing the proposal to respond at our next bargaining session.
Purpose – This Article would address conflicts between the terms of a Unit Member’s funder and/or grantor’s requirements and provisions we agree to include in our contract. The University proposed this Article after we rejected its inclusion in the Recognition article referenced above. How to address these issues is typically negotiated within individual contract articles, and to our knowledge, articles like this only exist in contracts that cover graduate students on fellowships, like the contract recently reached at Caltech.
Status – We will continue to review and consider the language of this proposal, as well as discuss if any further discussion is warranted in the context of certain subjects of bargaining.
We made progress in this session, but we also saw more clearly the University’s continued efforts to adapt contract language inappropriately drawn from graduate student contracts from very different contexts, rather than working from the language won by our fellow unionized postdocs at Mount Sinai, who live and work in the same city as us. This tendency risks slowing down the bargaining process — we will continue to seek to expedite the bargaining process when possible by using the most appropriate language for postdocs.
We look forward to our next session on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM ET. If you would like to observe the session, please let us know by clicking this link. You can access the full text of our proposals using our online bargaining tracker.
In solidarity,
Stephen Thornquist
On behalf of the UPROR-UAW Bargaining Committee