UC PostDoc Union Bargaining Updates, Moving Forward!

PRO/UAW site provides all the past and ongoing bargaining updates periodically, do check the site here. The latest of the update was published on Oct 9, 2009. They are making great progress, as per this update you will notice that they have bargained on various priority fronts and only few more to be dealt with and to the most part they are doing good, with the economy doing so terrible, they were able to move forward and almost set a baseline salary for PostDocs at 37.4K, a much better salary than it was though this not the best?.... Look at Uconn Health Center negotiated salary and benefits.

PRO/UAW Bargaining Update

October 9, 2009

Dear PRO/UAW Postdocs,

We have just completed four more days of bargaining with UC administrators. We reached agreement on several important articles that will significantly improve Postdoc working conditions—Leaves, Paid Time Off, Union Rights, Union Security and Work-Incurred Illness and Injury. Major improvements in these articles include winning the right for Postdocs to take more time off work with more compensation for important life events like having a baby or caring for a sick family member.

At this point, only a few issues remain unresolved. These include health and other benefits, wages, appointments rights and security, and not giving up the right of individual Postdocs to exercise their conscience in support of other workers’ strikes. UC is taking a particularly hard line on wages—arguing that Postdocs should be satisfied with their current salaries. We agree that Postdoc salaries are improved after the October 1st increase in the minimum salary that UC, as a result of bargaining with us, had to provide. The new minimum of $37,400 is still too low and all Postdocs, not just those at the minimum, deserve pay increases that reflect the cutting-edge research that Postdocs perform.

These will be difficult issues to settle both because of the economic crisis UC is experiencing and because UC negotiators continue to stall reaching final agreement in a number of ways including not providing critical information we need to bargain over these issues.

We are scheduled to bargain again with UC on October 26 and 27. As always, we will update you on any developments. Your support and willingness to fight for a strong first contract will continue to be critical as we push forward to reach a final agreement. If you have questions or would like to get more involved, please contact us by responding to this email.

In Solidarity,

The PRO/UAW Bargaining Team
Laura Bartley
Xiaoqing Cao
Kirill Afonin
Pace Lubinsky
Dil Kapadia
Oki O'Connor

Missing Yale Graduate 'Annie Le's body found inside Yale Medical School Blg?

Very Sad news, a graduate student was murdered inside Yale Bldg?.

Annie Le, 24 year young Yale Graduate Student's body was found in the basement of the Yale Medical School Building where her laboratory was located, the shocking news of the murder of Le's from Yale University is beyond anyone's imagination that such brutality and human killing crimes happen in places like Yale.

Police investigation is still ongoing and they are not sure who is the murderer, as per the following news, it seems to be an inside job. Raising a serious question as to how safe these so called ivy league labs and university campuses OR for that matter how safe the university campuses and research labs for graduate students and postdocs.

What a barbaric and cruel incident is this that happened in the top academic place that no one will ever imagine, are there Killers among the researchers or students or faculties??.Considering the amount of cut throat behaviors, insane competitiveness and rat race among research colleagues there are some graduates either drop the studies or just get crazy and instituitionlized for mental instability (it is not anything new, though I do not know the number of such cases, it does happen all over univerisities accross here in US and in other countries, but going to an extent to murder someone is just the extreme of it (when the killer is identified, it will all become clear about the safety of lab atmosphere). It is not clear who, when and how this happened, but Le was missing for few days and her body was found in the basement?.

Condolences to the families and friends of Le, I wish the graduate and post doc associations at Yale will do their best to speed up this investigation process and catch the killer before anyone else face such danger.

Clues point to inside job in Yale killing

By PAT EATON-ROBB (AP) – 28 minutes ago

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Clues increasingly pointed to an inside job Monday in the slaying of a Yale graduate student whose body was found stuffed inside a wall five days after she vanished from a heavily secured lab building accessible only to university employees.

Police on Monday sought to calm fears on the Ivy League campus, saying the death of 24-year-old Annie Le was a targeted act but would not say why anyone would want to kill the young woman just days before she was to be married. "We're not believing it's a random act," said officer Joe Avery, a police spokesman. No one else is in danger, he said, though he would not provide details other than to say that police believe no other students were involved. He also denied broadcast reports that police had a suspect in custody.

News Updates:-

New Haven Register:-

News > New Haven
Officials: Annie Le was strangled; Person of interest is released

Hartford Courant:-

Courant Published the timeline:-

Courant:-Medical Examiner: Annie Le Died By "Traumatic Asphyxiation"

NYTimes: Yale Student Was Strangled, Authorities Say

CNN: Yale student strangled to death, medical examiner's office says

Rutgers University PostDocs, the Union is Official now?

Alright, just couple of weeks ago, I posted the news
about Rutgers PostDocs are on their way to Unionize, now they made it official, it has happened on July 20, 2009.

Congratulations to Rutgers "PostDocs"!

Rutgers PostDoc Union Press Release:
July 20, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Nat T. Bender, 908/377‐0393 (cell)
nbender@ura‐aft.org
State Certifies Union for Rutgers Post‐Doctoral Associates and Fellows

Only Third Group of Post‐Docs in Nation To Vote for Union Representation
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.—The New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission today certified the vote of nearly 350 post‐doctoral associates and fellows to be represented by Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters‐AFT, the union that represents more than 5,000 faculty and graduate employees at Rutgers University. This is only the third group of post‐docs in the country to vote for union representation.

Rutgers Postdocs Form Union
It's not news that higher education is staffing its academic and research endeavors on the backs of a growing corps of contingent workers. But one group we hear little about is postdoctoral fellows. These are academic workers who, to advance their careers-and oftentimes in lieu of tenure-track job offers-jump onto research projects where they can trade their diligence and lab or research skills for pay a step above the stipends they received in grad school and little in the way of benefits. And in a tough job market, they can find themselves lingering in limbo for much longer than they intended.

July 21, 2009, 09:00 AM ET

Union of Postdoctoral Associates and Fellows Is Certified at Rutgers U.

By Audrey Williams June
A union for postdoctoral associates and fellows at Rutgers University recently got the stamp of approval it needed to begin negotiating a contract with the institution.The New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission certified the vote of almost 350 people who make up the third group of postdocs in the nation to form a union. They will be represented by the Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters-American Federation of Teachers. The other two postdoc unions are at the University of Connecticut and the University of California.


July 23, 2009

Rutgers University Postdocs Form a Union

Three hundred and fifty postdocs at Rutgers University in New Jersey have voted to form a union, becoming the third group of postdocs in the United States to unionize. They will join the Rutgers Council of American Association of University Professors (AAUP)-American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represents more than 5,000 faculty and graduate employees at Rutgers University.


July 24, 2009

Rutgers Postdocs Form Labor Union

Our colleagues at ScienceInsider yesterday posted news about the 350 postdoctoral fellows at Rutgers University voting to form a union, a vote certified on Tuesday by New Jersey's public employment relation's commission. The postdocs' union will join a labor council on the Rutgers campus that includes the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, which already represent faculty and graduate staff.

Collins selection to lead NIH by Obama's Administration is Disastrous to Scientific and Medical research

Collins as per the following news from The
Scientist was nominated to lead NIH by the Obama Administration, there can't be
any disastrous selection than Collins, he is a fake scientist who believes in
God, may be Obama realized that the whole of scientific research and medical
developments are meaningless and useless that God is responsible for everything,
so he is ready to put an Evangelical procrastinator to lead the American
Scientific research. NIH and scientific research has already been suffered from
inadequate funding and mediocre research outputs due to Bush administrations do
not care for science attitudes, now, to continue the same path, and evangelical
scientist is sought out to run NIH.......doomed!.

The Scientist.com news:-

Collins tapped to lead NIH

Posted by Bob Grant[Entry posted at 8th July 2009 07:50 PM GMT]

Francis Collins
Image: Wikipedia

Comment on this news story

The Obama administration has nominated geneticist Francis Collins to take the helm of the National Institutes of Health. Collins, who led the US government's push to sequence the human genome as head of the National Human Genome Research Institute in the 1990s, previously told The Scientist that he believes science should play a prominent role in policy making. "I would hope that there would be a strong and suggestive voice for science in the room, at the table," Collins said last May.

PostDocs, Comic Strip and Dr.Prasher, Exploiting PostDocs!

Jason Hoyt's blog article at "Mendeley Blog" is a timely
advice to PostDocs to not wait too long for things to change. There is even a comic
strip site that makes fun of the plights of PostDocs in science besides taking a joke at soon to be PhD holders, the graduate students. The story of Dr.Prasher, who supposed to win Nobel in Chemistry lost funding and works in a car dealership is plainly an agonizing fact postdocs should realize the treachery in their paths, infact it is not an exaggeration in Hyot's writing when I read, is PostDoctoral fellowship are a grand scale Ponzi Scheme?. Perhaps one day, his word might be proved right about the PostDoc Ponzi scheme glorified by the Universities and PIs of Labs.

Read the full article, it is an interesting and insightful news for PostDocs and advocates for Postdocs.

Are there too many PhDs?

10 Comments »

Ever hear of Douglas Prasher? Probably not. He just missed out on this past year’s Nobel in chemistry. That’s not unusual, as many scientists never even come close to a Nobel. What is unusual, is that Dr. Prasher works at a car dealership, not in a lab. Despite doing the critical research on discovering GFP that became the work for last year’s Nobel Prize, he was unable to find grant money and a job to continue his work.

Prasher’s story is what concerns me with science, engineering, math, and technology. In the U.S., we are constantly hearing about how the country is falling behind in science. We need more scientists to fill all of those jobs we want to create. And the cure to that is to fund more PhD programs! Yet, when you ask graduate students and postdoctoral scholars what their individual experiences are, a science career is a very tough road with low pay and few career prospects. It’s such a tough path that an entire PhD comic strip was born to alleviate the situation with laughter. Why then, is there such a disconnect?

Labour Union significant for Postdoctoral Research

David Hasemyer writes about UC postdoc unionization
and highlights why labour unions are significant to PostDoc

UC labor union significant for postdoctoral research

By David
Hasemyer
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. July 6,
2009
Postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system have unionized, marking a significant shift in how the researchers' work is viewed and providing a possible model for counterparts nationwide. As much as graduate student instructors and others worked to do years ago, the scholars now can bargain for wages and health care benefits and negotiate the recognition
they get for their academic contributions.

Although representation will give them more control over their role in the world of
high-powered academics – a right some say they've been denied by professors or mentors – they don't have a contract that defines their function or sets their benefits.
The scholars and university officials have worked on a contract for five months, and both
sides report some progress, but also some contentiousness.

UC labor union significant for postdoctoral research

By David Hasemyer

Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. July 6, 2009

HHMI, a Leader in Scientific and Medical Research Extends Support to PostDocs!

HMMI is one of the well known and reputed scientific research institutions in US, campuses like Janelia of HMMI is a state of the art place in every aspect for young scientists, now HHMI extends it's support for more postdocs (60 plus PostDocs and 5 million for three years!) in affiliated research centers. Good work HHMI.

This linkJune 16, 2009
HHMI Expands Support of Postdoctoral Scientists June 16, 2009

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced today that it is expanding collaborations with the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and the Life Sciences Research Foundation in order to increase support for outstanding postdoctoral researchers.

HHMI will now provide each organization with support for eight postdoctoral fellows a year – double the current number – and expand the reach of the program.

Fellows will be selected competitively by each organization. Each fellowship will have a three-year term. When the initiative is at full capacity, HHMI will be supporting 96 postdoctoral fellows at an anticipated annual cost of about $5 million. The program began in 2007 when HHMI announced it would fund up to 16 postdoctoral fellows in HHMI labs each year. There is no requirement that future fellows be appointed in HHMI labs.

First UCONN Health Center, then UC Campuses and now it is Rutgers turn to Unionize!!..

				Rutgers Postdocs
				We need a union

This image is from the Rutgers website: http://www.rutgerspostdocs.org/questions.html


First UCONN Health Center, then it was UC Campuses and now, it is the Rutgers turn to Unionization of PostDocs.......it is just the beginning of fruition of what UCONN PostDocs did few years ago...............!

The latest news among the PostDocs Union activity is released by the Rutgers AAUP/AFT. It was not in the news at all prior to this one, as my blog follows all the postdoc unionization activity in US and around the globe, I was bit surprised to see an advanced stage of unionization already in progress at Rutgers University, it is a great news!. I wish the Rutgers PostDoc all success and great benefits from their struggle to get better recognition...!

Postdocs voted in favor of unionization with AFT Rutgers, AAUP-AFT. Working together with great solidarity in a timely fashion, we have been able to file our petition for union representation with the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) on June 12, 2009!

Greetings, We did it! Postdocs voted in favor of unionization with AFT Rutgers, AAUP-AFT. Working together with great solidarity in a timely fashion, we have been able to file our petition for union representation with the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) on June 12, 2009! We will keep you informed of the next steps in the certification process. Meanwhile, let's continue our discussions about what issues to address at the bargaining table. Bargaining surveys will be prepared and sent out to help determine our priorities. Email info@rutgerspostdocs.org or call 732-745-0300, if you would like to be involved! In Solidarity, Postdoc Organizing Committee

The Struggle for Success in Academia for Asian Americans?

This special feature is brought to you by the AAAS/Science Business Office

Career Advice

Breaking Through the "Bamboo Ceiling" for Asian American Scientists

By Jacqueline Ruttimann

May 29, 2009

In academia and federal institutes, Asian Americans encounter what some call a "bamboo ceiling," similar to what female scientists faced 30 years ago.About 20 years ago Alice, a virologist, was up for a position as university president. She was one of three possible candidates. But during her interview things started to go a bit sour when the committee persistently asked her what she would be willing to give up should she be given the job. Sensing this, she told them point blank, "I don't think I'll get this job because of how I look." The committee members all grew silent.

Research Assistants Join Union, SUNY?

Research assistants join a union
Karen Kaplan
New York sees a rare feat.
Research assistants at the Research Foundation of the State University of New York (SUNY) in Stony Brook have decided to unionize — the latest development in ongoing unionization battles at US universities. Nearly all who voted last month to join the Communication Workers of America (CWA) are working in science, says Matthew Engel, a Stony Brook research assistant who campaigned for union representation. Frustrated by issues such as fees and job insecurity, they are seeking benefits comparable to those received by teaching assistants.