After months of negotiations, 2400 postdocs and staff researchers at the University of Washington (UW) went on strike today, arguing that the university’s proposed contract terms don’t amount to a fair wage. The roughly 6000 graduate students at UW won’t be on strike, but some of them—as members of the same union that represents postdocs and staff researchers—have pledged to not cross the picket lines.
The strike comes on the heels of a change in state law on 1 January, which mandated that overtime-exempt salaried employees at organizations with 51 or more employees be paid at least $65,484 annually—which is more than what many UW postdocs made previously. UW President Ana Mari Cauce argued in a 31 March letter to the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries that the minimum salary thresholds, which will increase annually and are set to exceed $80,000 by 2026, “are not financially feasible” and that postdocs should be exempt based on rules for medical residents and fellows. But the agency didn’t agree, making it clear in a 16 May response that it views postdocs as professional workers who are covered under the law.
The university increased the pay of some postdocs and staff researchers at the start of the year to comply with the law. But postdocs paid through fellowships didn’t see the same bump in pay. The university also hasn’t committed to increasing postdoc pay in future years to match the state minimum.
Instead, UW may opt to convert some postdocs to overtime-eligible positions starting in 2024, which would allow principal investigators (PIs) to pay them less than the state minimum and approve overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours per week. That possibility has been one of the main sticking points in contract negotiations. “If we’re having to log overtime, we really won’t even know our yearly salary that we’re going to get paid,” says Luci Baker, a postdoc studying mechanical engineering at UW and a member of the union’s bargaining team. “And that’s a very difficult position for the [PIs] to be in as well.”
The bargaining team representing staff researchers, which is negotiating a separate contract, is also pushing for wages that take into account the rising cost of living in Seattle. They’re negotiating for other benefits as well, such as a child care fund and access to a sexual harassment prevention program that’s already in place for graduate students and postdocs, says Jai Broome, a medical geneticist at UW and a member of the bargaining team.
“We are very disappointed at the postdoctoral researchers and research scientists’ decisions to strike after some significant progress was made in both negotiations recently,” a university spokesperson said in a statement. “The UW has continued to bargain in good faith and has offers on the table in both negotiations that are fair and represent significant wage increases.”
The strike, Baker says, is “not something any of us want to do. But we are in the position where we have to.”
Nearly 100 UW faculty members sent a letter to Cauce last week urging university administrators to keep postdoc salaries above the state minimum thresholds. “Most postdocs are paid from our grants, putting us in the strongest position to appreciate the pressure these high wage standards put on our research budgets. We are also best positioned to understand the ways in which making postdocs overtime eligible would negatively impact our work at UW.”
The letter writers argued that forcing postdocs to track their hours and ask for overtime pay could “further exacerbate the power imbalance between postdocs and PIs, who may pressure postdocs to work overtime without reporting extra hours.” They also argued that it would create an administrative burden and that it’s often not practical for postdocs to track their hours. “Postdocs read papers when they’re commuting in on the light rail. Postdocs answer phone calls and Slack messages at all hours of the day,” notes Sharona Gordon, a UW physiology professor and one of the lead authors of the letter.
In a response, Cauce wrote, “While some PIs, like you, have indicated your grants can accommodate annual volatility and sustain increases of this magnitude, others have stated unequivocally that their grants cannot.” Faculty members, she added, will have the option of paying their postdocs more than the minimum if they’re able to do so.
That may be true. But Gordon argues that it’s becoming harder to recruit postdocs to Seattle because of the high cost of living and that it’ll be easier for PIs to write higher salaries into their grants if they can cite a university policy or state law that requires them to pay at that level. “If everybody at the University of Washington is asking for a different arbitrary number, I think we’re not going to be successful in getting anything beyond the [National Institutes of Health minimum] for our postdocs,” she says.
For the striking researchers, it’s important that the university set a minimum salary that pays them a living wage. “There’s already a crisis brewing in finding people to fill postdoctoral appointments because of how long we’re asking these researchers to accept a lower wage for the prospects of being able to stay in academia, and unless we … put pressure upward, this isn’t going to change,” Broome says. “We can’t afford to wait.”