Postdoctoral associates at the University of Western Ontario will soon be bargaining a collective agreement as the latest in a growing number of postdocs that are unionizing at universities across North America.
Western’s administration opposed the union move, arguing that postdocs at the London campus were independent contractors who didn’t meet the legal definition of employees. The issue went before the Ontario Labour Relations Board that ruled in favour of the more than 200 workers, certifying the Public Service Alliance of Canada as their bargaining agent on Sept. 30.
Peter Ferguson, who led the campaign to unionize, told the London Free Press that working conditions for postdocs are tough. They put in an average of 60 to 80 hours a week, he said, and earn salaries in a range of just $20,000 to $40,000 a year.
Most are paying off student loans, he added, and face uncertain futures because of one-year contracts.
The union is the second of its kind in Canada. Postdoctoral fellows at McMaster University joined the Canadian Union of Public Employees earlier this year.
“These employees at Western and McMaster are part of an accelerating trend toward postdoc unionization at major research universities in North America,” says Marcus Harvey, the CAUT staff member responsible for outreach and organizing in this sector.
As many as 5,000 postdoctoral researchers across the 10-campus University of California system will soon be represented by the United Auto Workers union. The UAW already represents much of the labour force that makes the system work, including graders and teaching assistants.
UC postdocs say forming a union and collective bargaining is the only way to improve their wages, which start below the minimum recommended by the National Institutes of Health and offer no cost-of-living adjustments — an important issue among workers living in some of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the US. Their goal is also to ensure a system that can independently arbitrate disputes.