Labor and Policy Task FOrce

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Future of Research Supports Academic Labor Unions

The Labor Task Force is dedicated to improving the working conditions of STEM graduate students and postdocs.

To achieve this goal, we have two major action items –

  1. Surveying the impact of academic labor unions on graduate student and postdoc benefits and wellbeing
  2. Find solutions for postdocs who lose benefits like healthcare upon accepting certain fellowships.

Updates on Unionization efforts

Union mythbusting survey

Academic workers at the graduate student, postdoc, and faculty levels are unionizing to achieve fair and equitable working conditions at rapidly increasing rates across America. Unionization efforts face many unique hurdles including being legally recognized as workers by their universities, failures in transparency by institutional administrations, and the growing casualisation of labor within higher ed. In support of the unionization of early career academic workers, the Labor Task Force aims to create and distribute resources meant to bolster the efforts of established and campaigning unions including blog posts debunking common union busting myths, examples of successful organizing strategies, and a collection of conglomerated data about the state of academic work environments across the US.