Postdoc hirings at OHSU have been stagnant since 2019 despite rapid growth in research funding. Research has brought in a historic $600 million to OHSU– improving the credit rating and bringing world renowned prestige to this university. Despite this, OHSU has given no support to research labs for recruiting and retaining staff like the postdoctoral fellows. While other institutions like the University of California and the University of Washington supplement their Postdocs’ salaries to stay at the forefront of research, OHSU is falling behind.

Postdocs organized a union because the root cause of OHSU's recruitment and retention issues are a result of low wages, poor benefits, no support for foreign internationals, and vacation leave that is 40-60% less than all other employees at OHSU. The PWU has been trying to amicably negotiate a fair agreement but your bargaining team has only offered postdocs a disrespectful zero cost, status quo, economic package. Status quo for postdocs means that being a bus driver is a financially more stable career path than being a research doctor developing cancer cures at OHSU.

OHSU is treating the NIH federal minimum salary mandates, designed to offset living costs, as standard wage. This is irresponsible of OHSU, as in Portland, the cost of living is more than 20% above the national average. This is why Postdocs are asking for a wage that is commensurate with Portland’s living costs and the level of prestige that their biomedical research brings to Oregon. Without supporting research salaries, OHSU is jeopardizing their ability to acquire future grants.

OHSU’s behavior forces international workers into a pay to work system. Visa holders are expected to pay their own immigration fees and use paid time off to renew their visas. This is preventing Postdocs from taking on international collaboration and visiting their families for months or even years, ultimately because they are trapped in the U.S. OHSU cannot tout its international biomedical research reputation when they treat their foreign workers like indentured servants.

OHSU is a place of inequity for postdoctoral researchers. Postdocs only have 10 days of vacation leave per year – that is 40% to 60% less than all other OHSU employees and graduate students. OHSU is also falling short with the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities for postdoctoral fellows and research faculty. At their current projected rate of URM recruitment, OHSU will remain a predominantly white-male dominated institution well past 2080.

The status quo is obviously not working for research or the people doing the research at OHSU. We therefore demand that OHSU’s bargaining team move past their status quo economic proposals. Postdocs have put forth a reasonable economic proposal that only requires OHSU to contribute 0.1% of their billion dollar budget as a stopgap measure for research grants to be adjusted. If OHSU wants to continue being a renowned biomedical research institute, OHSU needs to pay its fair share.

We expect OHSU will respond by negotiating fair economic proposals,

The undersigned postdoctoral researchers and concerned community members