Posts tagged NIH
Why some federal workers aren’t scared by the threat of shutdown layoffs
October 7, 2025 // NPR has not learned of any layoffs due to the shutdown since congressional appropriations lapsed on Oct. 1, although many federal agencies have filed reorganization and reduction-in-force plans with the administration as a result of a February executive order and subsequent guidance directing them to do so.
UAW Local 4811 pushes for immigrant protections, pay equity in UC negotiations
August 25, 2025 // About 33,000 of the over 57,000 employees under UAW Local 4811, including academic student employees and graduate student researchers, are being represented in the ongoing negotiations. UAW Local 4811 is also representing nearly 5,000 student services and advising professionals in the determination of another bargaining unit contract – the first contract for the new group, which was recognized by the University in April. There are five bargaining units under UAW Local 4811 – academic student employees, graduate student researchers, student services and advising professionals, postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers – three of which are being represented in the current negotiations. Once a new contract is determined, ASEs and GSRs will merge to simplify bargaining and implementation, according to a press release from the UC Office of the President.
Backgrounder: Executive Order: Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs
March 31, 2025 // The practice of “official time” is when unionized federal employees perform union-related activities, rather than their actual public service duties, while being paid by taxpayers. The Federal Unions EO requires that agencies, upon termination of an applicable collective bargaining agreement, reassign any workers who performed “official time” to positions where they perform solely agency business. It also contains language regarding existing grievance proceedings and allows for the head of each agency to submit a report to the President within 30 days highlighting any agency subdivisions that were not covered but should have been covered under the Federal Unions EO.
Former NIH union leader indicted on federal wire fraud charges in Maryland
March 24, 2025 // Goodwin, of Bowie, had criticized the labor practices of Trump’s first administration before she resigned her job and stepped down as the union’s president in 2019. She was quoted in a 2018 news release from the union’s national headquarters as saying the Trump administration “feels it’s above the law” and accusing it of union busting by walking back on certain agreements made during contract negotiations.
DOGE will use AI to assess the responses of federal workers who were told to justify their jobs via email
February 27, 2025 // A coalition of unions and groups that have been fighting the Trump administration's mass layoffs of probationary workers charge the effort was unlawful. They amended their lawsuit against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management over the weekend to add a claim involving the OPM email directing workers to justify their workweek.
NIH researchers say agency seeks to block unionization effort
August 7, 2023 // The agency is arguing that postdocs and graduate students aren’t employees, according to union organizers Early-career researchers who work in labs operated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have hit a roadblock on their way to unionizing. In June, a group of postdocs, graduate students, and postbaccalaureate researchers asked the agency that oversees the certification of unions by federal employees, the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), for permission to hold an election to determine whether early-career researchers at NIH are in favor of forming a union. But on Monday, the organizers say, they were told that NIH had submitted paperwork to FLRA arguing that many of the union’s potential members are not employees and don’t have standing to form a union. Union representatives also declined to send Science the entirety of the document NIH submitted to FLRA. But they did share one excerpt, which argued that most of the potential union’s 4800 likely members cannot be considered employees. “The Agency is of the view that individuals in all categories appointed under the CRTA [Cancer Research Training Award] and IRTA [Intramural Research Training Award] authorities, i.e., all categories other than Clinical Fellows, Research Fellows, and Senior Research Fellows, are not employees under the Statute,” the document states, according to the union.