The Carleton University Postdoctoral Association (CUPA) has launched a petition asking for better contracts for postdoctoral researchers.
The petition asks for post-docs to be granted benefits, like all other university employees, a higher minimum salary, as well as gradual wage increases to ensure that their salaries stay on-par with inflation.
Carleton’s post-docs have been negotiating their first unionized contract since April 2014. Their current base salary is $25,000.
Will Leight, president of CUPA, said post-docs are very important. “We do a lot of the research that goes on at Carleton and many universities,” Leight said.
He adds for the most part, post-docs don’t get paid very much because universities can “get away” with paying them lower wages since most postdocs take jobs for their careers, rather than the salary.
“You don’t become a post-doc for the money, you become a post-doc because that’s the next step on your desired career of doing research in some field, so your motivation is not to get the high salary,” he said. “It’s, ‘can I get this job at this place which will help me then get the next job and move on to finally becoming a professor?’ ”
Limited job openings for professor positions also means many post-docs are staying in their positions for longer than they have in the past.
Leight emphasized universities often take advantage of post-docs’ willingness to stay in research jobs, despite higher paying jobs existing in the private sector.
“There’s only so much sacrifice you should be asked to do. Most post-docs, if they wanted to get a job with better money, they probably could,” he said. “Once you have a PhD in some field, especially in engineering or science fields, there’s a fair amount of demand for these kinds of people in the private sector but you don’t take those jobs because that’s not what you’re interested in doing.”
He said universities contradict themselves by insisting on the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields while neglecting to fairly compensate post-docs for their work in those fields.
He added he is hopeful the petition will raise awareness about post-docs at Carleton and their situation. “We’re just hoping to gain exposure because lots of people don’t know that postdocs are out there. You don’t usually interact them,” he said. “Post-docs are just in the lab or whatever so they’re not necessarily a super high-profile part of the university.”
Rosann Runte, Carleton’s president, said they were in negotiations with CUPA, but refused to comment further.
“When you’re in negotiations,” she said at a recent Board of Governors meeting, “you don’t actually talk about it in public.”
Leight added the petition is asking for basic employee rights that other university employees already have. CUPA’s petition is nearly at their 200-signature goal.
