We are Columbia postdocs forming a union to improve the postdoc experience at Columbia and to increase our voice as researchers locally and nationally

Postdocs make essential contributions to the world-class research conducted at Columbia, but many of us still struggle to pay high housing and other costs 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 in the current political climate.

We join a growing national movement of researchers and other academics forming unions with the UAW to improve our lives and our work. UAW postdocs and graduate student workers across the United States have made a difference advocating for science research funding, working to stop the Trump administration’s discriminatory Travel Ban, helping win extension of the Optional Practical Training period on F1 Visas, fighting to win changes in Department of Labor overtime rules that led to significant pay increases for hundreds of postdocs at Columbia and much, much more.  And international student workers right here at Columbia have already accomplished a lot through the union.