Your bargaining team (Bteam) met with management on Tuesday, January 16th. Marking the first bargaining session of the new year, we discussed the following proposals:
- Intellectual Property (TA’d) — Postdocs will refer to the OHSU policy no. 04-50-001.
- Career Development (Union counter) — Dedicated time off for career development activities. We reiterated our proposal of ten days for dedicated career development activities, countering management’s offering of five.
- Performance and Expectations (Union counter) — Article covering processes for postdocs and advisors to develop mutually agreed upon position expectations and duties. We continue to propose that these agreements between postdocs and advisers are mutual (consistently stricken by OHSU).
- International Affairs (OHSU counter) — Article pertaining to the issuing of visas, onboarding and support for international postdocs. Here is a comparison of the key differences in our proposals:
The OHSU team responded to our International Affairs proposal largely with the status quo policies for international postdocs– a telling message of how the upper echelon of OHSU feels about the foreign workers who put their lives on hold to build OHSU’s brand as a world-class research institute. Research at OHSU (bringing in a record $600 million in funding) could not happen without the expertise of international scientists — international postdocs represent over half of the current OHSU postdoc demographic — but these international postdocs are a uniquely vulnerable group for exploitation. OHSU is currently facing faculty backlash due to the mishandling of the recent Dan Marks sexual assault allegations and our proposal was a chance for OHSU to address these inequities. Their status quo response, however, indicates a lack of interest on their part to address the structural vulnerabilities highlighted by the Covington report, or begin to address the disparities with which international postdocs are treated.
Your Bteam’s position on international affairs is reflective of the concerns you have raised. 1) Current onboarding resources are not adequate; 2) Visas are a workplace requirement for international postdocs that the individual postdoc should not have to pay for, and 3) Postdocs should not be forced to use PTO when traveling for visa renewals. To us, these are major equity issues that leave international postdocs at a disadvantage. We want to know that we hear your concerns loud and clear. Now, we need to work together so that OHSU hears us.
In solidarity,
The PWU Bargaining Team
