Investing with what money?
It is humorous when these e-mails get circulated about investing. How can a postdoc invest? With the grand 33000 salary (postdoc level 2)? It saddens me that this forum has not been a site where we can mouth off and get organized about postdoc issues and problems. Does not it bother anyone that with the skills and education we have, we are treated like minimum wage workers? And please do not use the label "trainee" because really how much we are getting trained here? I think we should get some clues from the research techs and UC clericals and become a bit more active. I want to see how a lab will function when one day we decide to walk out. Any thoughts out there? Am I the only one who feels like this? You know soon we will be making as much as grad students do...
Re: Investing with what money?
June 23, 2005 - 4:58pm — adminHow right you are! I think everyone feels the same and I encourage all of you do complain as much as you want on these forums. You can post anonymously and get your frustrations off your chest.
That said, the Graduate Division is working to improve the situation for postdocs and things will hopefully get better albeit slowly. The SoPS advocacy committee met for the first time two weeks ago and talked about this issue for the majority of the meeting. A meeting report should appear on the site shortly. What we need are people willing to help out!
In the short term the best advice, I am told, is to meet with your PI and discuss options for increasing your pay. We will shortly be adding links on this site to NIH and UCLA pay scales and are planning to hold workshops to aid in your discussion. The recent postdoc survey carried out by Sigma Xi reported that the median salary for postdocs was $38,000 - so some people are clearly negotiating well.
Everybody - please feel free to post any comments you have, contact us if you wish to help, or send us suggestions for how to negotiate better pay.
Re: Investing with what money?
June 23, 2005 - 6:41pm — ajayAhhhh finally... thanks for sparking some emotions here - its nice that you bring up the fact that most of us had a better standard of living as a grad student... being treated as "under training" and not having the perks of being a student like higher gym fees and getting taxed for food etc really means a good 8% of our salary is just dissipating... thats 150$ a month... erm almost enough to pay for a car or a yearly trip overseas that few of us can afford right now...
It seems the UC-wide system is now trying to ramp up salaries over the next 5 years to the NIH miminum... but considering the NIH minimum itself is a moving target, I shall remain a skeptic until I see a plan with numbers on there. Perhaps someone can point me that way...
Another interesting point... as fulltime grad students we are employed 19-20 hours by the university and thats what we receive the stipend for... so in theory we are now employed for double the time for less than double the salary as postdocs... someone figured that we are of less use!
I am all for advocacy and voicing our opinions, but. since its our own careers that we are building, the idea of a walkout seems to hinder the very thing we are working towards. (Presumably this is why most of us just grin and bear it anyway.) But even without such an act, I am sure we have enough to show to convince people that we are bringing a lot of value to the system and deserve commensurate remuneration. Any thoughts? Anyone clear about exactly where the problem lies?
Maybe it time to go afford myself a discounted beer ;)
Ajay
Re: Investing with what money?
June 23, 2005 - 11:00pm — dvatakisGood to know I am not alone. Maybe I went on a minor rampage (walk out talk) but being more proactive is necessary. Postdocs have no status. What are we? This very grey zone created around the term or title postdoc suits universities very well. We can get benefits but not really demand raises. We cannot negotiate salaries. We get some perks the university staff has but not others. I think that is were the real problem lies. We have good brains and good hands and we need to be rewarded for it. When I mentioned a walk out Ajay, I did not mean a month long strike. God no. We caould just declare apostdoc appreciation day. We pick a day and we have a civil, informative and why not, festive gathering somewhere in campus to raise awareness.
This happened with graduate students across the country. When the unionization movement started with the TAs at the UCs I was agrad student at USC. USC out of fear that we may follow suit gave grad students generous raises I mean big jumps plus full dental, medical, and eye care benefits. Stirring the waters a bit always helps :-D
It amazes me that many universities treat postdocs this way. We are the driving force in every research institution. If this treatment continues a lot of very capable people will abandon academia for a cushy biotech position.
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