We will be holding elections for our bargaining committee soon and encourage everyone to run. Please click here and let us know if you’re interested.
We formed a union to improve the Postdoc experience at UConn and to increase the political voice of researchers locally and nationally. We follow in the footsteps of tens of thousands of other Postdocs, graduate employees, and other higher education employees who have already unionized.
The UConn graduate assistant employees unionized in 2014 and have bargained for increased wages, more fee waivers, restoration of state employee health benefits, parking pass reductions, childcare subsidies, paid family leave, appointment security, increased international student rights, protections against sexual harassment, and more. The UC Postdocs unionized in 2008 and have subsequently bargained for increased wages, guaranteed annual wage increases, improved benefits, paid parental and maternity leave, longer job appointments, protections from sexual harassment, and more.
Now that we have won recognition of our union, it is now our turn to bargain for our first contract.
What needs to happen ASAP. Before we can start bargaining, we need to:
- Gather more bargaining surveys from postdocs across our campuses, so that we can have as much information as possible on what issues are important to all of us to help guide contract negotiations with UConn. The more postdocs who fill out these surveys, the more power we will have to make improvements that reflect the interests of all of us at UConn.
- Elect a Bargaining Committee: the Bargaining Committee, working with experienced union negotiators, will draft initial proposals and negotiate over these proposals with the UConn Administration. The expected commitment is meeting on a regular basis to prepare our proposals, talking to Postdocs about our bargaining demands, and time at the bargaining table that is based on availability of the union and administration’s bargaining committees.
- Ratify initial bargaining goals: goals will be written by the bargaining committee based on feedback from the bargaining surveys.
We encourage anyone who’s interested in running for the bargaining committee or joining the organizing committee to please contact us. Click here to let us know if you’re interested. We hope to hold elections soon.