Hundreds Rally For Postdoc Union

by Maggie Grether

Pediatrics postdoc Will Krouse: “We mostly just want to ask to be treated with the respect that level of expertise and training affords.”

Claire Laxton suddenly found herself without a job in the summer of 2024 when funding for the Yale School of Public Health lab where she worked as a postdoctoral associate was slashed. She recalled that she had just 60 days to find a gig that fit the requirements of her work and study visa.

Laxton now works in the department of immunobiology studying Long Covid. The scramble for employment showed her the precarious position of postdocs at Yale, and convinced her that a union is necessary for job security and workplace protections. 

Laxton told her story to hundreds of rally-goers who filled half a block of College Street on Wednesday evening. 

“We’re not disposable,” Laxton said, to cheers. “We are highly skilled, highly trained workers. We lead projects, we train students, and we write the very papers and grants that bring in all of that money and prestige to Yale.” 

The rally for postdocs took place outside the UNITE HERE headquarters at 425 College St. In speeches, union organizers said that two-thirds of postdocs had signed union cards. They called on Yale to agree to a neutral process for union recognition.  

Postdoc speakers emphasized high cost of living, job precarity, and lack of workplace protections as reasons why they want to unionize. They hope to follow in the footsteps of the Yale grad student-teacher union, Local 33, which won recognition in 2023, in a union election that received over 91 percent support. 

In moments, Wednesday’s rally seemed to transform into a block party, as DJ Tootskee mixed pop hits and machines pumped iridescent bubbles into the air. Organizers passed out glow sticks, hand warmers, and UNITE HERE-branded beanies and shirts. A long line formed for the Jitterbus, parked across from Yale’s Old Campus. 

The event was a show of solidarity between the three existing unions representing Yale workers, as well as prominent Connecticut lawmakers. Representatives from Local 33, Local 34, and Local 35 — the unions for Yale graduate student workers, clerical and technical workers, and service and maintenance workers, respectively — all spoke at the rally. So too did Gov. Ned Lamont, New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney, Board of Alders President / Local 35 Chief Steward Tyisha Walker-Myers, and Mayor Justin Elicker. 

The postdoc-organizing rally took place roughly two months after 2,000 people flooded the streets of downtown to call for higher wages and increased funding for the city amidst contract negotiations involving two of the university’s most politically influential unions, Locals 34 and 35. At that Sept. 26 rally, Local 34 Organizing Director Barbara Vereen said that postdocs would add 1,300 members to the union’s ranks. According to Local 33’s website, postdocs are currently unionized at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Rutgers, and UConn, among other universities.

Wednesday’s rally also came as the city has begun a new round of negotiations with the university to try to avoid an upcoming $8 million drop in the Yale’s annual voluntary payments to New Haven.

“We respect the rights of university employees to organize and engage in concerted action under the law,” a Yale spokesperson told the Independent for this article, “and we encourage any group seeking to organize to contact the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or the Department of Labor for more information.”

Several speakers on Wednesday discussed the Trump administration’s cutting of research grants and targeting of international students, arguing that protections for postdocs are more urgent during this turbulent moment in higher education. 

“As postdocs and as grad workers, we’re also standing together in this moment in order to push back against unprecedented attacks on universities, on research, on science, and on truth,” Adam Waters, president of Local 33, said to the crowd. “As we organize to win a postdoc union, we are insisting that the pursuit of knowledge still matters.” 

Will Krause, a 28-year-old postdoc working in pediatrics, said he felt the benefits of a union contract when he worked as a graduate student in Yale’s Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology department in 2024. After Local 33 ratified its first contract with the university, Krause enjoyed higher pay and access to a union steward who could help navigate disagreements with lab PIs, or principal investigators. 

Now a postdoc, the lack of a grievance process for workplace problems concerns Krause. 

“Postdocs are highly trained professional workers,” Krause said. “We mostly just want to ask to be treated with the respect that level of expertise and training affords.”

Last January, when Leila Wahab and her husband moved to New Haven for her job as a postdoctorate associate at Yale, her husband had no health insurance. While the couple decided to pay to add him to Wahab’s Yale Health plan, it posed a financial burden, Wahab said. 

Better health insurance policy is one of many reasons why Wahab, a 29-year-old postdoc in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, is organizing for Yale to recognize a postdoc union.

“When I look at my budget every month, I feel very clear that a union would make a huge difference for my family,” Wahab said to cheers, as she addressed a rally for postdocs on Wednesday night.