Yesterday we hand delivered our official demand to bargain along with representatives of the Sinai postdoc union, UAW Local 4100, urging the Sinai administration to respect our vote.
Please take a moment to vote on the Initial Bargaining Goals!
The vote to ratify these goals is currently open and will run through Friday, 12/20. Eligible voters are all graduate student workers currently employed by the institute who have filled out a bargaining survey or an authorization card.
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Strong participation in the vote will send a clear message to Sinai that they should commit to bargain, and stop trying to overturn our election results.
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To develop these goals we used feedback from bargaining surveys, town halls, and hundreds of conversations since we started forming our union.
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The goals are purposely ambitious and broad, based on a conceptual agenda that includes all the issues raised throughout our campaign.
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In the coming weeks, the bargaining committee will prepare more specific proposals that address each of these goals in detail.
We also have some important updates:
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Yesterday, we hand delivered our official demand to bargain with proposed bargaining dates to the Sinai administration. We were joined by elected representatives from the postdoc union at Sinai, UAW Local 4100.
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We urged Sinai to respect the outcome of our vote and agree to bargain, and asked that they commit to do so by next Monday, December 23rd.
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The letter makes clear that a majority of student workers support our union, and that unionizing can strengthen the world-class research at Sinai by allowing us to address workplace issues that make it harder to do our work.
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With the Trump administration imminent, we would prefer to focus on ways we can work constructively with Sinai and the tens of thousands of unionized researchers in the UAW to fight reductions in federal science funding instead of wasting time debating whether student workers should have the right to bargain.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts, and remember to vote!
Anupriya Ramamoorthy, DRS
SSW-UAW Bargaining Committee