Our elected Bargaining Committee had our seventh bargaining session with the JHU admin yesterday, and we passed the remainder of our non-economic proposals. We were joined by eight observers, and we encourage any interested postdocs to RSVP to be an observer at future sessions. We gave the JHU admin six new proposals and five counterproposals and shared that we are backed by a majority mandate through the ratification vote for our Initial Bargaining Goals, and the admin handed us four counterproposals. You can read all of these articles on our Bargaining Tracker. Although no new Tentative Agreements (TAs) were reached, it was a very busy and productive session.
We began the session by presenting proposals for our remaining non-economic articles: Union Security and Checkoff; Intellectual Property; Workload; Work-Incurred Injury or Illness; Non-Discrimination, Harassment, and No Retaliation; and International Employee Rights. We explained our rationale for each, which centered around making the University a more equitable and safe workplace while helping Hopkins fulfill its mission statement. Finally, we drove home the weight of our proposals by informing the JHU admin that we have majority support as demonstrated through our Initial Bargaining Goals, which were ratified by a majority of postdocs with 660 votes in favor versus 3 votes against, representing even more postdocs than voted in our election last summer. Each one of those votes helped to demonstrate a strong and united front to the admin.
Next, we gave the JHU admin five counterproposals: Appointment and Reappointment; Employee Resources; Job Posting; Management Rights; and No Strike, No Lockout. We again explained our rationale for each, emphasizing the importance of job security to postdocs and our shared desire to make Hopkins competitive on the job market, while also pointing out places where we made reasonable compromises (e.g. Job Posting will not go into effect until 2028, as JHU switches to a new internal system). We are now waiting on the JHU admin to counter.
JHU admin then handed us four counterproposals: Grievance and Arbitration; Union Rights; Health and Safety; and Inclusive Work Environment. In Grievance and Arbitration, the admin continued to push for the ability to file grievances against postdocs despite other avenues available to them, maintained their position by ignoring our attempts at compromises around arbitration and resolution timelines, and pushed for adding an extra step to the process that not only would delay resolution via arbitration if implemented, but is not the standard held by our peer institutions with unionized postdocs. They also wanted the JHU Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) to have exclusive authority in cases of discrimination or harassment with no option to grieve.
In Union Rights, the admin crossed out language allowing reasonable campus access for our UAW representatives to administer our contract, debated with us over the terminology “dedicated” for bulletin boards, and tried to remove their obligation to publish our contract while also crossing out orientation requirements. In Health and Safety, the admin deleted a section requiring minimum infrastructure and crossed out nearly half of our language, which they justified by saying “details are not necessary” in the Health and Safety article. In Inclusive Work Environment, the admin removed most of the language for disability accommodations and religious practices, and they duplicated their attempt to give OIE exclusive authority in cases of discrimination or harassment. We are giving all due consideration as we write our counters.
When the session ended for caucus, we spoke with our observers about their perspectives. According to Austin Ramsey, an observer from the Cell Biology department:
“This session was an exemplary showing by our resolute bargaining team and our observers this past week. We handed over our last non-economic items, which was bolstered by the fact that a majority of us postdocs voted to approve the demands that informed our positions, and the fact that there were more postdocs present in the room than representatives on their bargaining team.”
Our next session will be Monday, June 8th, 11am-2pm on the Eastern campus, and we confirmed six additional dates through the summer. We are stronger together, and more observers in the room adds additional pressure on the JHU admin, so we encourage anyone interested to RSVP to be an observer for any (or all!) of our sessions throughout the summer.
In solidarity,
Amanda Shaver, Biology
Ben Seicol, Otolaryngology/ Head & Neck Surgery
Cat LaCourse, Pediatrics
Jaime Eugenin von Bernhardi, Neuroscience
Mitch Cram, University Writing Program
Saakshi Dulani, Physics & Astronomy, Philosophy
Tianyu Cao, Pathology
PRO-UAW Bargaining Committee