Employees are free to vote at any time the polls are open.

Continuing to build a movement at Sinai and across  academia

A Message from SPOC-UAW Members

Together we can make Sinai more equitable and inclusive.

Inequalities — including those based on gender, race, sexual orientation and immigration status — continue to create barriers for many of the most talented to enter the academic and scientific workforce. And existing systems of recourse for problems like discrimination, harassment, and bullying too often fail and can take years. A recent survey conducted by Nature found that 1 in 5 grad students faced gender or racial-based discrimination, and another study found that early-career researchers from abroad are more likely to be threatened with termination.

Though much work remains to be done, graduate students, postdocs, and adjunct faculty in the UAW have helped make progress on many of these issues, both at the bargaining table and in policy advocacy through the UAW. At the University of Connecticut, for example, a graduate assistant worked with her union to successfully resolve a major sexual assault and harassment complaint in three months, whereas complaints of gender and race-based discrimination against Sinai leadership have remained unresolved years later. By forming a union, we can negotiate for strong, survivor-centered protections and hold Sinai accountable. 

At other major research institutions  like Columbia, NYU, the University of Washington, and WPI, graduate employee unions have won strong protections like enforceable timelines, union representation, protection from retaliation, and the option to appeal to a neutral third-party arbitrator for cases of harassment, discrimination, and abusive conduct. With a union, we have more power to be heard, to determine our right to a safe and healthy workplace, and to ensure that our rights are enforced.

Fair workplace standards enable student workers to prioritize research.

As researchers, our work powers Sinai. Student Workers perform experiments, write research papers, TA classes, grade exams, contribute to patents, help write research grants, and more. Simply put, Sinai would not be considered a top-tier research institution without our work. We make these contributions in the most expensive city in the country, after years of historic inflation. And while Sinai has been forced to raise minimum salaries in order to remain competitive with other unionized institutions in NYC, these raises are neither guaranteed, nor protected, and are quickly falling behind other academic employers yet again. 

Just last year, our postdoc colleagues at Sinai approved their first union contract and took their minimum salaries from among the lowest for postdocs in New York City to the highest in the entire country. In doing so, they helped raise the standard for other NYC institutions while winning other important benefits for the first time, like paid parental leave, a fund for child care and housing-related costs, support for relocation, and paid time off for visa renewal. It is time for us to come together and demand pay and benefits that reflect the value of our contributions, and to secure them in a contract, so we can focus on the quality of our research instead of how to make ends meet.

Read More:

The Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-02/uc-strike-energizes-labor-surge

People’s Policy Project: When Grad Students Unionize, Wages Go Up

Contract Before-and-After: How a Contract Improved the Sinai Postdoc Experience

A stronger voice for international student workers

International student workers at Sinai living in the US on student visas make up a significant part of our community. International students can face multiple unique challenges. By unionizing we can negotiate for greater legal and structural support. We can also seek greater workplace protections – like protection from unfair termination, abusive conduct, and unreasonable work expectations – that are especially impactful for the international student community.

We can also create a community so we don’t have to face problems alone and gain a stronger voice at Sinai and in the national landscape. With more than 100,000 academic workers across the U.S., including graduate employees, postdocs, research scientists, and non-tenure track faculty, UAW nationally and locally has become a leading voice advocating for expanded opportunities for international students. By joining together, international grad student workers have a stronger voice to advocate for policies like increased access to OPT and opposing limits on international student visas.

The UAW’s commitment to international researchers and scholars stems from the leadership of international researchers and scholars themselves. Graduate employee and postdocs unions affiliated with UAW are often led by international scholars, who serve in top leadership positions in local unions nationwide.

Joining together with other academic workers in the UAW has become more urgent than ever as  recent government actors have waged unprecedented attacks on science, sexual harassment protections, and the rights of international scholars.

READ MORE

International Student Rights: https://sinaistudentworkers.org/international-student-rights/  

Op-Ed: Why International Grad Student Workers Support GSWOC-UAW →

UW Daily: UAW 4121 stands up against new Trump ruling that limits the visas of international students and scholars→

Columbia Spectator: UAW is a strong ally for international students and postdocs→

UAW 5810: Resolution To Mt. Sinai Postdocs on International Researcher Rights→

We are voting YES for our union, Sinai Student Workers-UAW (SSW-UAW)!

After hundreds of conversations among graduate student workers over many months, and despite Mount Sinai’s extensive efforts to stop our campaign, we will finally have the historic opportunity to vote “union yes” for Sinai Student Workers-UAW on September 26th. In doing so, we would join tens of thousands of unionized academic workers across the US who have already come together to improve their working conditions and create a more equitable, inclusive, and fair scientific community.

As student workers, we play a critical role in driving the world-class research conducted at Mount Sinai. However, without collective bargaining, we have no real way of contributing to decision making around our working conditions, which the Sinai administration decides unilaterally. Many of us struggle with the high cost of living in New York City, lack secure rights in the workplace, and face increasing uncertainty about our futures given the precarious nature of science funding and unstable regulation of visas and work authorization. This all unnecessarily hinders our ability to focus on quality research.

If a majority of us vote “yes” for SSW-UAW as our union, the Sinai administration would be legally obligated to bargain with student workers over salaries, benefits and workplace rights, and to commit any agreements into a binding contract.  

We therefore urge our colleagues to vote ‘yes’ for SSW-UAW as our union, so that we have the strongest possible mandate to bargain a fair union contract with the Mount Sinai administration that improves our working conditions and our lives.

Iden Sapse, Microbiology

Jeremy Fischer, Immunobiology

Jesse Mangold, Microbiology

Jira White, Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Justice Simonetti, Neuroscience

Kamryn du Plessis, Neuroscience

Levon Rodriguez, Disease Mechanisms and Therapeutics

Marianna Liang, Neuroscience

Marisa Goff, Microbiology

Mehek Ningoo, Immunobiology

Michelle Kim, Neuroscience

Mimi Zhang, Cancer Biology

Paula Restrepo, Genetics and Genomic Sciences

Philip Hwang, Neuroscience 

Qi Xiu Fu, Neuroscience

Rasika Iyer, Neuroscience

Ratchell Sadovnik, Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Sam Mcconnell, Neuroscience

Sanan Venkatesh, Genetics and Genomic Sciences

Sanutha Shetty, Neuroscience

Soore Oguntuyo, Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Suzannah De Almeida, Neuroscience

Tesia Bobrowski, Microbiology

Trevor Murphy, Microbiology

Tri Dong, Neuroscience

Vishal Rao, Immunobiology

Yvonne Lin, Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Beau Baars, Cancer Biology