Posted on 02/07/2010 4:53:08 AM PST by reaganaut1
Enough is enough. Post-docs, complaining of low pay while conducting vital research, are rising up in university towns across the state.
Nearly 300 postdoctoral researchers at University of Massachusetts campuses in Amherst, Boston, and Dartmouth joined the United Auto Workers union, becoming the first post-doc researchers in the state to unionize. The move triggers a process that will require the university system to negotiate over wages, health insurance, job security, and other workplace issues.
“We’ve taken this step so we can protect our rights on the job, and make sure post-docs working on different campuses and in different labs are treated fairly and receive comparable pay and benefits,’’ Simona Maccarrone, a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst, said in a written statement.
The United Auto Workers represents workers at more than 40 colleges and universities in the country, including 25,000 teaching assistants, research assistants, graders, tutors and other student academic employees at UMass, the University of California, California State University, and the University of Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Join Union, yeah, that’s the ticket, we see how well unions have done for autoworkers.... /s
Postdoctoral researchers at UMass unionize........
How many are foreigners and how many American? I’d love to know the various research areas and if it is taxpayer funded.I’m sure it is
That’s wonderful. Unions aren’t happy to have sent manufacturing jobs overseas, now maybe we can export some eggheads.
The last Post Doc I had at UMASS was from Russia. I have been going there for years and have never had an American one yet.
Interns-yes-but in the research area-nyett,nada.
And Mass. has Socialized medicine already...so maybe the Unions taking over medicine and health care is Plan B.
Who is helped by this?
State university professors are unionized in New York State.
A worker who turns a bolt contributes to the value of the finished product. A Post Doc contributes what? The university allows them to stay and work there more-or-less as a favor. The university provides a stipend so these people can remain in academia and pursue a teaching career. But, with plenty of teachers available from non-unionized post-docs why would the university continue once the post docs start negotiating for all the other UAW bennies? Perhaps the university will reason, hey, we make money by manufacturing post-docs. There’s no actual use for post-docs if we don’t provide them with a living after they graduate. Then the equation becomes simple. The university makes x amount in tuition from these rubes for whom there is no real job that uses that education. All the university has to do is subtract the cost of keeping these useless lumps from the cost of maintaining them after the graduation. My guess is this unionization will mean many, many fewer positions for post docs. Way to go UAW.
“complaining of low pay while conducting vital research”
Post-docs and tenured professors will find out just how “vital” their work is soon enough. They may be surprised.
I wonder if any of them are researching how high tuition must be for paying students to give post-docs the lifestyle they desire?
Then someone can research how many post-docs can actually be paid with the real number of students who can pay that level of tuition.
“Vital research” my ass. If it were vital it would command vital money.
Otherwise what do the autoworkers know about post-doc work? Or what do the steelworkers know about health care?
I’m still trying to get my head around a bunch of post-docs going on strike...and then what? What happens when a bunch of Ph.D. candidates in wymens/queer/race-gender-class/oppression studies refuse to continue their work? What’s the opposite of a catastrophe?
Sounds like an old-fashioned jurisdictional dispute among unions.
The UAW is encroaching on NEA territory by seeking contracts in the field of education.
Stay tuned...train wreck to follow...
This is one of the reasons why I got out of the university system. Whether you’re a graduate student or a Post doc researcher, you’re only supposed to it for a short time - several years at most. It is not a permanent position! Get your degree, get you post-doc fellowship done and get a real job!
So go unions.
10-4!
UMass just swallowed up a private law school in Dartmouth, MA, which will wind up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years. Great. Let’s cut funding for UMass by 20% and let the administration prioritize.
Why use taxpayer money to fund anything beyond undergraduate degrees? If that? Post docs are a dime a dozen, you can import instructors from the private institutions.
There are so many doctoral candidates fighting for post-doc positions, the whole crowd could be replaced immediately - probably from walking into a Starbucks or local book store and shouting “looking for post-docs, who can start on Saturday?”
And, ironically, post-docs can also easily be filled by all the international students that have been paying for tuition for years - and the college could replace American post-docs with international post-docs and call it a move for diversity, also killing the unionization in their ranks.
Don’t bother outsourcing to India, when your Indian doctoral students are already a plurality. Why worry about China taking over the field, when they are already a majority in the math and science doctoral programs at many schools?
These idiots get paid what they are worth acording to the market. Now that they have skewd the market with unions that money will have to come from somewhere. let’s see how those “tenured” commie professors like getting their wages cut. It may also make universities more competitive and if conservative universities play their cards right, they would lower tuition to their institutions. I have a feeling this trend will make mainstream universities unaffordable. If we also cut off the taxpayer spigot we may have a chance to take universities back in our cultural war.
Thanks much.... I once visited a major university medical research facility (vacuumer of Federal money) and just about everyone looked like they were from Mainland China. Not even Taiwan. I suppose some were post docs and some grad students
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