From Stanford Postdocs United: In help of the Graduate Employees Union

To the Stanford Administration and the Stanford Group,

Our graduate scholar employees are within the strategy of organizing a union. This essential, legally protected and democratic course of ensures that graduate scholar employees may have the facility to collectively take part in shaping their work atmosphere. We, alongside over 150 different postdocs on the time of publication, stand in solidarity with graduate scholar employees and wholeheartedly help their unionization effort. As postdocs at Stanford, we all know firsthand how essential the work of graduate scholar employees is to the core analysis and instructing missions of the College. This work is indispensable for the functioning of the College and to our personal success. For that reason, we stand in solidarity with graduate scholar employees and name on the College to respect their proper to unionize.

Graduate scholar employees are the driving drive of Stanford’s tutorial excellence. Nevertheless, the dearth of truthful compensation for his or her work that’s commensurate with the price of residing is detrimental to graduate productiveness and their private well-being. In line with the Invoice on Affordability printed in October of 2022 by the Graduate Pupil Council (GSC), Stanford graduate college students’ earnings over the past decade has persistently fallen into the Very Low-Earnings class, and 78% of graduate college students in the newest survey affirmed they don’t meet the minimal requirements for monetary well-being. Moreover, annual wage will increase haven’t stored tempo with record-high inflation charges and rising housing prices. As well as, many graduate college students expertise meals insecurity and lack of entry to transportation. These circumstances make pursuing a Stanford graduate diploma particularly difficult for worldwide college students and college students from marginalized backgrounds.

Based mostly on these considerations, the GSC has labored tirelessly to advocate for higher situations for graduate scholar employees with the College administration, together with salaries commensurate with price of residing, higher healthcare protection and sustainable transit advantages. Disappointingly, directors have repeatedly dismissed the info collected by the GSC that help their considerations on affordability. The College additionally didn’t seek the advice of the GSC when setting subsequent 12 months’s minimal wage, regardless of having promised in any other case. The College’s repeated lack of collaboration and communication with the GSC on affordability points has demonstrated that actual change for graduate scholar employees can solely come by way of unionization, giving them an equal seat on the desk when demanding higher situations.

A union empowers employees to hunt higher working and residing situations with the College administration by way of structured, legally-enforced collective bargaining and elevated solidarity. We help the method by which graduate scholar employees are organizing and ask Stanford to stay impartial whereas graduate college students bear the democratic choice of forming a union. Additional, we ask the College to chorus from becoming a member of Duke College in making an attempt to overturn the Nationwide Labor Relations Board ruling that grants graduate college students at personal universities the suitable to arrange a union. Ought to the graduate scholar employees vote to unionize, we hope that the College will acknowledge the democratically-elected union and conduct negotiations in good religion. You’ll be able to present your solidarity with the graduate scholar employees by signing this letter of help.

Stanford Postdocs United is a gaggle of postdocs involved with bettering working and materials situations, together with housing, affordability, transit, help for dependents and safety towards harassment. Attain out to [email protected] if you want to study extra or become involved. 

Alexander Jaffe is a postdoc in Earth System Science learning microbial communities within the international ocean.

Max Turner is a postdoc in Neurobiology and research visible processing in fruit flies.

Catherine Wilka is a postdoc in Earth System Science. Her analysis focuses on the local weather and variability of the stratosphere.

Menglan Xiang is a postdoc in Pathology and research vascular biology and stroma-immune cell interactions in well being and illness.