On October 4, the Union for Postdoctoral Researchers at Columbia University (CPW-UAW 4100) picketed the inauguration of the 20th President of Columbia University Minouche Shafik. The union has been fighting for more rights and compensation since April of this year. Their contract expired in June. In August, 98% of the nearly 1000 postdocs and research scientists that voted authorized a strike. The union is the first postdoctoral union in a private university in the US.
The new President Shafik has a history of attacking strikes. Between 2017-2023, Shafik served as the Director of the London School of Economics. In response to a student strike in the summer of 2023, Shafik decreased the pay of striking students by up to 75% for several months.
Shafik has also held important leadership roles in various predatory imperialist institutions, such as the Bank of England, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, all of which facilitate the superexploitation of third world countries by imperialist monopolies.
A reporter with The Worker interviewed two members of the union, Alvaro and PJ. Additionally, A graduate student with the School of Social Work at Columbia University, Haley, also briefly spoke about the struggles faced by students in her program, which are ineligible to be a part of the union because they are not technically employed by the University.
The Worker (TW): Why are you all picketing today?
Alvaro and PJ (CPW): We are fighting for a new contract and have been negotiating for 22 sessions. The contract expired June 30th and Columbia has been reluctant to provide us with a basic standard of living. We want higher compensation and salary adjustments for inflation, subsidy for housing… New York City is in the midst of a housing crisis and Columbia is the only University in the city that does not provide a housing subsidy. They claim there are not enough funds—however, certain departments at the school have started providing them, and we are fighting for all of us to receive it.
Childcare is also a major demand. We want a stipend for childcare. Many of us are in our 30s and have families. The lack of a stipend for childcare particularly affects female students, who have to decide between entering academia or having a family.
Currently, the stipends we receive come from grant money. What we are fighting for is to restructure the system of payments so that we will receive funding from Columbia itself. They have enormous amounts of funds to contribute—the endowment alone is $600 million. There is $8.3 billion available to the Board of Trustees for unrestricted funds and they refuse to use any of it for us. They use this money to just bolster their administration and they get paid way more than us.
TW: What is the trajectory of the picket?
CPW: We are going on strike if our demands are not met. Bargaining is close to stalling and they have been hardening their positions. We are not even meeting with the people who have the power to give us our demands. We are very close to a steep decline in the number of postdocs and getting new ones has been difficult. Without adequate compensation, many of us have no choice but to move to other industries and end academic research.
Congress is broken. NIH [National Institute of Health, where funding for postdoc students comes from] is not giving us more money and so PIs [principal investigators, the leader of research projects] are unable to increase our salaries. Our demands are directed toward the Columbia administration—the PIs can’t pay us more and they are struggling themselves. We are struggling against the Columbia central administration. The PIs should be on our side, having more funding will allow us to do more research and improve the quality of our research. We need to change the model, the system by which Columbia operates. Money reserves right now are not going to research.
TW: Do you think anything is going to be changed with the new president of Columbia?
CPW: Minouche Shafik owes her position to the people who do not want us to get raises. She is a member of the Board of Trustees and tied with the elites.
TW: Do you have anything to say about the UAW autoworkers on strike?
CPW: We completely support the other workers on strike. We stand in solidarity with them and we are going to be picketing with them. [Another CPW organizer confirmed that they are organizing trips for students to go support UAW autoworkers on strike nearby.]
[At this point, Haley, a student from the School of Social Work of Columbia, joined in the conversation.]
Haley: We’re having a lot of problems too. We have to do internships for 24 hours a week and they are unpaid. On top of that, I’m currently taking seven classes and some of us have to work jobs as well to make ends meet. People are doing the same jobs as us at our internship but they are salaried employees.
CPW: Yes, for us people are doing similar work as us and are getting paid twice as much. The future of academia is at stake. There is relative academic freedom at Columbia compared to working at a for-profit corporation. Columbia is not giving competitive salaries, and this will destroy academic research.
