We have withdrawn our petition to seek legal recognition of our union from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to prevent the Trump administration from revoking collective bargaining rights for graduate student workers.
As a result of Trump’s illegal firing of NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, the NLRB no longer has the ability to issue final decisions. The Trump administration is likely to appoint anti-union members to the three currently vacant seats in the federal leadership of the NLRB, resulting in a majority Republican board that would decide on Sinai’s pending appeal against our union. This would give the NLRB the opportunity to revoke the prevailing ruling that all graduate student workers at private institutions have the right to unionize. Withdrawing our petition, alongside other graduate student workers with pending petitions, takes that opportunity away from them.
By refusing to bargain and continuing to contest our right to unionize, Sinai is clearly planning to use the power of the Trump-controlled NLRB against us, actively aligning with the anti-worker, anti-science Trump administration over Sinai’s student workers fighting for fair wages, benefits, and rights in the workplace. Sinai’s decision to prioritize its own power over the well-being of the student researchers who contribute to its academic and scientific excellence is deeply disappointing.
Despite this, we will continue to organize to improve our working conditions. Contrary to what Sinai might say, our unionization efforts are far from closed. Our true power has always been in our ability to take action together. This moment has made it clear that now, more than ever, we cannot rely on government institutions to enforce our rights and must continue to pursue collective action with even greater intensity to achieve our goals, as we remain committed to organizing and winning an equal say in our working conditions in the future.
A timeline of events since our union election vote:
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11th September 2024: The regional director of the NLRB ruled that student workers at Sinai have the right to unionize as employees under existing precedent.
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25th September 2024: Sinai submits an appeal, known as a request for review (RFR), to the federal level of the NLRB to challenge the decision made by the regional board in regard to our petition
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26th September 2024: We voted by an overwhelming 90% (218-yes to 24-no out of 360 eligible voters), in favor of SSW-UAW as our union
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24th October – 7th November 2025: We elected our Bargaining Committee, who developed a set of initial bargaining goals based on bargaining surveys completed by 80% of student workers, in preparation to bargain with Sinai for a contract.
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16-20th December 2025: We voted 97.8% (219-yes to 5-no) in favor of ratifying our initial bargaining goals.
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19th December 2025: Sinai refuses to bargain, citing the pending RFR with the federal NLRB.
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28th January 2025: The Trump administration fires democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the federal NLRB leadership at a 1-1 democrat to republican deadlock, with 3 seats open (2 were vacant when Trump took office)
What happens next in our campaign?
Thousands of other student workers across the country have reached fair agreements with their administrations to establish unions and bargain collectively outside of the NLRB process, including at NYU, Brown University, and Georgetown. We have the power to get Sinai to follow this precedent and agree to bargain with us, just like more than thirty other graduate worker unions representing more than 60,000 student workers.
In addition, during the previous Trump presidency, student workers at universities across the country coordinated to fight on a local and national scale for protections, such as reversing restrictions to H1B and J1 Visas, and against Trump’s proposed ICE International Student’s guidelines and attempted rollbacks on Title IX protections.
Our power as a movement at Sinai and as UAW researchers does not come from the NLRB, but from our ability to organize, and our determination to exercise a unified voice to improve our lives. This will not change, and in fact will be even more important in the months and years ahead.
Join us to discuss the recent updates and what our next steps are at our Happy Hour next Thursday, 13th February, 5:30 PM at Lexington Publick! RSVP here for the Happy Hour
Please reach out if you have any questions or would like to get more involved.
In solidarity,
Sanutha Shetty
Anupriya Ramamoorthy
Justice Simonetti
Tri Dong
Qixiu Fu
SSW-UAW Bargaining Committee