We are Postdocs & Research Associates working at Northwestern University that are joining together to form a labor union in order to improve our shared working conditions. By forming a union, we can negotiate as a group for better wages, benefits, and working conditions through collective bargaining, ultimately securing these advancements in a union contract. 

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) is a national labor union known for its rank-and-file, member-driven structure, where workers democratically lead and make decisions. Since the 1930s, UE has championed social and racial justice through campaigns for racial and gender pay equity, LGBTQ rights, and harassment-free workplaces. UE has become a leader in the fight to unionize the private sector of higher education, advocating for fair treatment of academic workers nationwide. By affiliating with UE, NUPU is proud to join this powerful legacy of worker-led organizing to secure the rights and benefits Postdocs and Research Associates deserve.

A labor union is a group of workers - in our case, all postdocs and research associates working at Northwestern - that come together to promote our common interests and needs. As a union, we can speak with one unified voice - acting collectively to fight for positive change in our labs, offices, and research buildings. 

Put simply, a union gives us the power to directly negotiate with Northwestern to improve our working conditions through the process of collective bargaining. Without a union, the University has unilateral control over our salary, benefits, and other working conditions. As we saw with the Salary Petition -- even when a majority of Postdocs/Research Associates across the University stand together to petition for fair compensation, NU Administration has the power to dismiss our concerns without any conversation. 

A union allows us to rebalance this power dynamic. Under collective bargaining, we democratically determine our priorities and elect our own representatives to negotiate with the University over the terms of our employment. Once we have come to a tentative agreement with the University, Postdocs & Research Associates vote on whether to accept and ratify this agreement. Once ratified, the tentative agreement then becomes a legally-binding contract. At this point, NU administration cannot change the terms of our employment without negotiating with us directly. 

Yes! Nearly 20,000 postdocs are currently unionized across a number of universities in the United States. Columbia University, the University of California system, Rutgers University, Mount Sinai, University of Washington, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Oregon, Harvard University, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Princeton University, OHSU, Brown University, Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell, Einstein University, University of Southern California and University of Alaska are among the universities that have recognized postdoc unions. 

There are a number of postdoc unions also currently organizing and seeking recognition. The list of postdoc unions is growing, as it becomes increasingly evident that unions can bring about significant improvements in the workplace.

Yes! International postdocs have the same legal protections to organize and join a union as US citizens. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) guarantees you have the right to organize a union to negotiate with your employer over your terms and conditions of employment. This includes your right to distribute union literature, wear union buttons and t-shirts, solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards, and discuss our union with coworkers. Section 8 of the NLRA states that supervisors and managers cannot spy on you (or make it appear that they are doing so), question you, threaten or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your co-workers -- that means your PI, administration, and other supervisors are bound by law not to retaliate for any organizing activities, regardless of your visa status.

NUPU-UE recognizes the additional challenges and burdens faced by international postdocs regarding visa maintenance/renewal, workplace harassment and exploitation, moving to a new country, and job security. Therefore, our union is committed to negotiating with the University to provide support and economic/legal assistance to international postdocs upon arrival and throughout visa-related processes, as well as additional protections against abuse and increased job security. For more information, click here to read our page on International Workers!

Yes! You can be a part of NUPU if 1) you are a postdoctoral scholar, NRSA postdoc fellow, direct pay postdoc, or research associate; 2) you are employed by Northwestern University, and 3) you are not a manager or supervisor.

Steps in forming a union:

1. Establish a robust and diverse team of organizers and supporters. 

2. Gather signed union authorization cards. Secure supermajority support from NU Postdocs & Research Associates expressing their endorsement of our union by signing authorization cards.

3. Seek recognition from the university based on our strong support. If the university administration fails to acknowledge the union, we will present the authorization cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and request a representation election. 

4. Vote in a representation election. This election allows us to cast our votes on whether to be represented by the national union labor we democratically voted to affiliate with (UE). If the majority of Postdocs/Research Associates vote "yes," the union becomes certified, and Northwestern University administration is legally obligated to recognize and engage in negotiations with us.

5. Elect local union leadership and initiate contract negotiations. At this stage, NU postdocs will collaboratively prioritize the issues they wish to champion and elect representatives from the members to engage in bargaining with Northwestern University. A democratically approved contract, ratified by NU postdocs, will be necessary for implementation. No contract will go into effect until it is approved by all NU Postdocs & Research Associates.

One of the simplest yet most impactful ways to support our unionization efforts is by becoming a Building Organizer (BO). As a BO, you’ll team up with other postdocs and Research Associates in your building/department to drive positive change by staying informed about NUPU-UE campaigns, relaying concerns from your colleagues to the Organizing Committee, and engaging your department in key NUPU actions. The role is flexible, allowing everyone to contribute based on their availability and capacity.

We provide training, resources, and support to get you started, with experienced organizers ready to help. No experience needed—just your willingness to get involved!

Click here to become a BO today! 

Yes! We aim to establish a large and diverse organizing committee that represents a wide range of voices from different departments and life experiences. Join our organizing committee to contribute to the building and establishment of NUPU, which will have a lasting positive impact on postdoc careers at Northwestern University. We are always recruiting postdocs to join the committee, so we warmly invite you to join us.

Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), you have the right to take action for better conditions in your workplaces. Protected actions include (but aren’t limited to) signing petitions about working conditions, and asking your coworkers to do the same. The NLRA prohibits employers and/or supervisors from threatening employees with loss of jobs or benefits, threatening to eliminate programs/departments, and taking part in other forms of retaliation in response to an employee taking protected actions.

At other Universities, we have seen that when hundreds of workers stand together, it is more difficult to single anyone out. While we do have legal protection, our goal as NUPU is to organize to take strong mass actions so that we can protect ourselves while achieving concrete improvements to our working conditions through unionization.

Importantly, our negotiating relationship will be with University Administration, not with our PI's or other supervisors. We all want our labs to be financially stable, positive working environments. We would not negotiate for anything that would have detrimental effects for our lab, coworkers, or PI's. 

Furthermore, recent studies have shown that unionized academic workers report higher levels of personal and professional support from their advisors - suggesting that unions promote a more positive work environment at Universities.

Not yet! While there will eventually be dues, we pay nothing until we have a negotiated a contract that has been approved by the majority of our coworkers.

The improvement in pay, benefits, and fair treatment you win with a union are much greater than the cost of dues. Using the graduate workers at Northwestern as an example (NUGW-UE), the dues payments are a small fraction of the 22% raise in their stipend they won during their negotiations with Northwestern. Paying dues is one of the best investments you can make! 

On average, dues-paying workers in the U.S. who are in a union earn $207 more per week than non-union workers. This translates to ~$10,000 in earnings per year. The wage premium continues to increase as collective bargaining continues around the world. 

Paying dues are an important part of building a strong union. In addition to maintaining our financial and operational independence, dues provide us with the resources to support contract enforcement, organizing activities, and other union operations/events. 

While it is true that our research groups and labs are largely dependent on funding from federal/private agencies outside of our control, we are requesting that any salary increases enacted by NU Administration in response to the petition would be covered by University/departmental funds and not fall onto individual PI’s or labs. There are many recent examples of Universities taking this approach, following salary negotiations with graduate/postdoctoral unions or in response to petitions/surveys run by postdocs, including: 

• • Rutgers AAUP-AFT won salary increases amounting to 27.9% over the life of the contract and provisions that the University will fund the portion of salary increases not already accounted for in grant funds or department budgets.

  • Princeton postdocs received an 18.5% raise after delivering their own minimum salary petition to University Administration, with temporary supplementary funding provided to labs by the University to cover wage increases.

  • MIT postdocs received an 18.5% increase in salary after the results of a postdoc-run survey showed widespread financial stress amongst postdoctoral workers. The initial phase of these increases (1 year) were funded by the Institute. 

  • Northwestern University grad workers negotiated a first contract (2024) that includes a 21.8% raise and full vision/dental premium coverage. The entire economic package of the contract constitutes over $20M more in expenditures a year by NU compared to pre-contract. During negotiation both parties arrive at mutually agreeable terms; NU would not have agreed to an economic package they could not cover and neither party wished to see detrimental effects to labs and research.

  • University of California postdocs negotiated a significant pay raise in their 2010 contract and both the administration and the workers agreed to a “phase-in” process so that PIs would have time to adjust to the raises without disrupting current research activities. Since then, the number of postdoctoral positions in the University of California system has increased from around 6,500 in 2010 to around 6,900 today.

Northwestern certainly has the money to fund the salary increases demanded in the petition, as it currently holds roughly $15B in its endowment - one of the highest University endowments in the United States. Raising minimum salary for Postdocs and Research Associates would cost about $25M, under 0.2% of the total endowment and less than is paid out to just 10 Northwestern executives and head coaches in annual salary and benefits. See NUGW’s 2023 Analysis of NU’s Financial Report for a detailed analysis of NU’s financials. 

We believe that University funds should cover the costs to pay us what we deserve. We understand that PIs must run their labs under financial conditions largely set by bodies outside of their control. It's well-past time that Northwestern started contributing to our salaries, rather than relying on public/private grant funding to cover our wages. Importantly, our negotiating relationship will be with the University, not with our PI's or other supervisors. 

In fact, establishing competitive pay rates should help PI's in the recruitment and retention of postdocs. Publicly available data on postdoc employment numbers from Universities that have recently enacted significant raises to postdoc minimum salary suggests that increased salary actually may slightly increase the number of postdocs employed at those Universities in the years following raises (see figure here).