On Wednesday, April 15th, and Wednesday, April 22nd, we had our 39th and 40th bargaining sessions with the Einstein administration.
In the last two bargaining sessions, Einstein made significant movement toward us on several articles, including an important win: a strong Tentative Agreement (TA) on Appointment Security: Appointments and Reappointments!
The language we won protects the terms and conditions of our employment for the duration of our appointments. We also secured minimum appointment durations and minimum notice periods for appointment non-renewals.
This was a hard-fought issue. Einstein initially resisted even minimal commitments and proposed a six-month probation period for new postdocs. The language in our TA meets, and in some places exceeds, the standard for unionized postdocs in NYC. This win follows the Open Letter signed by over 80% of postdocs that we delivered to Einstein on March 23rd, 2026. It’s our collective power that makes wins like this possible.
We also passed counterproposals on the following topics:
As always, the full text of these and all other proposals can be viewed in the bargaining tracker.
Our TA on Appointment Security: Appointments and Reappointments, combined with progress in our negotiations on other non-economic articles, means that we’re closer than ever to being in a position to introduce proposals on economic articles. Continuing to organize and speak up as Union members is critical to show that Einstein needs to keep our compensation and benefits competitive with other institutions in NYC by adjusting them to acknowledge both the immense value we bring to Einstein’s research mission and the fact that NYC is the second-most expensive locality in the U.S. for a postdoc to do research.
Our next in-person session is TOMORROW, Friday, May 08, 2026, from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM ET. Click here to RSVP if you’d like to attend this or a future session and see the process firsthand! Your presence matters — observers make a real difference at the table.
As always, we encourage you to reach out with any questions, concerns, or feedback by simply replying to this email.
In Solidarity,
Antonio Hernandez, Pathology
ERU-UAW Bargaining Committee