Postdoctoral researchers and research associates from the Northwestern University Postdoctoral Union-UE called for more frequent and longer bargaining sessions with the University at a demonstration preceding a second bargaining session Tuesday.
NUPU-UE and the University began negotiations on March 17 on a contract that addresses areas including frozen wages and international workers’ rights. At the protest outside Evanston MetroCenter, postdocs alleged the University failed to communicate about location and time for negotiations and demanded earlier logistical correspondence.
“The postdocs are pissed off, and they’re not gonna roll over,” astrophysics postdoc and Bargaining Committee member Nick Vieira said. “They’re here to make their displeasure known.”
After Tuesday’s bargaining session, NUPU-UE succeeded in reducing the time between bargaining sessions from five weeks to every other week through July, the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts postdoc and Bargaining Committee member Madeline Meier said in a reel on NUPU-UE’s Instagram.
“Divided we beg. United we bargain. So let’s keep this energy going,” Meier said in the reel.
However, Meier said, the upcoming sessions were still half days, leaving a key demand from the protest unresolved.
The bargaining sessions also resulted in tentative agreements on bargaining ground rules and a severability article, according to a Tuesday update shared on NUPU-UE’s website.
Meier said in the reel that the University introduced “Unfavorable Management Rights and Strike articles,” “verbally rejected” NUPU-UE’s Inclusive Work Environment Article and pushed back against the union’s Health and Safety article. Regarding the Union Security article, NU countered NUPU-UE’s demand of automatic union membership with “open shop,” where employees can choose whether or not to join, according to NUPU-UE’s website.
The University declined to comment on ongoing negotiations.
“The University appreciates the engagement of postdoctoral scholars and research associates and looks forward to future bargaining sessions at an appropriate schedule and pace,” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Daily.
Vieira said NU has not been communicative on logistics surrounding bargaining sessions, scheduling the first negotiation two months after the union’s first request and missing several deadlines to respond.
“We first communicated to them back in January that we were ready to negotiate when they were,” Vieira said. “And they ghosted us, frankly. It took them weeks and weeks and weeks to respond.”
Not knowing logistics such as time and location creates scheduling difficulties for committee members, some of whom need to coordinate daycare plans for their kids, Feinberg postdoc and Bargaining Committee member Edward Arnold said.
Vieira said NUPU-UE was made aware of the location for Tuesday’s negotiations less than a week prior to the meeting.
“We think that there’s a real possibility that they intentionally didn’t tell us to make it hard for us to organize and hard for us to get here, which is really insidious if you think about it,” Vieira said.
Vieira said the union expressed a desire for full-day negotiations during the first session. The March 17 and Tuesday bargaining sessions were both half-days. “Two (or) three hours” was not enough time to make progress, Vieira said.
On its website and in negotiations, NUPU-UE has also called for meetings to occur both in Chicago and Evanston, since members work on both campuses. The University did not commit to this on Tuesday, according to the union’s website.
In August 2025, NUPU officially unionized under the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represents “tens of thousands” of workers across different sectors, according to UE’s website.
NUPU-UE’s next two half-day bargaining sessions with the University are slated for May 7 and May 21, Vieira said.
“We’re the people that make the University run. We’re the people that do the research. We’re the people that bring in the funding for the University to run,” Arnold said. “They need to take us more seriously and start committing to full-day bargaining sessions.”
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