Inside Higher Ed: Unionizing Postdocs
They’ve been called “the invisible scientists,” and while that’s probably hyperbole, postdoctoral researchers are, on many university campuses, neither fish nor fowl — not yet professors, and yet no longer students, either. Their numbers have risen steadily in recent years with the increase in biomedical and other research spending, to an estimated 50,000 to 60,000, but the length of time that many postdocs spend in this in-between stage has been growing, too. Also on the rise, among some of them, is frustration at low pay, insufficient benefits and the reality that fewer of them may find a full-time faculty or research job at the end of their stint.
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