Penn researchers vote to unionize amid federal health and science funding threats

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Early career researchers at the University of Pennsylvania voted by a large margin in mid-July to unionize. Organizers say they are pushing for better salaries, job security and more protections for international scholars, especially under the current political climate with the second Trump administration’s threats to science funding and visiting researchers.

The union consists of postdoctoral researchers and research associates, which are scholars who already have their PhDs and do research, teach students, and perform other professor duties. They join medical residents and graduate students at Penn, who have also formed unions in recent years. The postdocs and research associates at Penn voted to join the United Auto Workers, UAW, alongside their graduate student colleagues and many other graduate students around the country. Over a fourth of UAW members work in academia, as opposed to the auto industry. Postdoctoral researchers at other universities have also pushed to unionize recently, including at Princeton University, Brown University and Northwestern University.

The National Labor Relations Board recently certified the results at Penn, which was 703 to 38 in favor of unionizing out of a total of 1,500 eligible voters. In a statement, a Penn spokesperson said they now wait for the union to start the bargaining process.

Union organizers say they are thrilled and excited by the results and will start by polling to assess priorities. During the campaign to unionize, they focused on job security, protections for researchers who come to Penn from outside the U.S. and better salaries.

Ryan Fair, a radiology researcher at Penn and union organizer, said postdoctoral researchers and research associates are typically in their late 20s and early 30s and need salaries and benefits that allow them to plan for the future.

“We’re not making salaries that are consistent with many of our fellow doctoral graduates, which means we’re … often hard-pressed to buy houses, to save for retirement, to start having children at a stage in our lives where a lot of other people are taking those steps,” he said.

He pointed out that postdocs and research associates that unionize at other universities have been able to negotiate salary increases of more than 10%.

More than half of the postdocs at Penn come from outside the U.S., with visas tied to their positions, so organizers would like longer contracts and job security for international scholars, said Nelanthi Hewa, an organizer and postdoctoral researcher studying journalism and labor at Penn. She’s from Canada and is at Penn on a two-year contract.

“Finding out how many international workers have one-year contracts was one of the big motivators that I had to get more involved because I wanted to see the benefits that I feel of having a longer contract … guaranteed and available for everybody,” she said.

She said she would also like to see Penn help international scholars with the cost of visa renewals, because they have to leave the U.S. to do so. However, the graduate student union recently presented that proposal to the university during negotiations, only to be rejected by the university, as reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Union organizer and materials scientist William Drayer said postdoctoral researchers and researchers work in the same labs as graduate students, so they will be in lockstep with the graduate student union on this issue.

The United Auto Workers, which the postdocs and research associates at Penn voted to join, has also intervened during the federal government’s sudden move to cancel hundreds of research projects across the country. UAW joined a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health terminating grants, leading to some being reinstated, including at Penn.