[HN Gopher] Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming un...
___________________________________________________________________
Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first
time
Author : geox
Score : 247 points
Date : 2023-06-05 11:40 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| [deleted]
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I hope something, anything is done to help fix the living
| circumstances of researchers in the United States. Our best and
| brightest should be well funded, with little fear of harassment.
| data_acquired wrote:
| >Although NIH wages aren't inherently tied to those training
| grants, if wages increased significantly for NIH fellows,
| universities might "raise holy hell", Wiest says, because it
| could incentivize researchers to apply for NIH positions instead
| of those at universities.
|
| This is a pretty weak point. There's hundreds of research areas
| and problems not worked on at the NIH that are explored in the
| hundreds of universities in the US. I don't see anyone switching
| research areas for better pay --- your skill sets are often tied
| to a certain class of problems. Sure, yes, there may be such
| effects in certain research areas. But what fraction of
| university budgets even go towards post-doctoral fellow stipends
| (when weighed against every other expenditure in a university
| budget)?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| If private companies did this, it would be a huge lawsuit: we
| mustn't raise wages, we have a tacit agreement with the other
| big employers to keep them low!
| kkylin wrote:
| Not disagreeing with your larger point, but a nitpick: at these
| levels (postdocs, research scientists) the relevant university
| positions will be funded by grants, in fact largely from the
| NIH. University budgeting doesn't have all that much to do with
| it.
|
| Now, postdoc salaries _are_ set by a combination of university
| policy + whatever the grant budget says, but grant proposals
| are also assessed based on how much they ask, and postdoc
| salaries will be set by whatever NIH actually awards the PI. In
| the end, for NIH to pay their early career scientists more
| without creating problems for itself (by competing with groups
| it funds), it will likely have to increase postdoc pay across
| the board. This will likely add some upward pressure to postdoc
| pay across fields, since many universities do look at entry-
| level NIH postdoc pay as a reference.
| data_acquired wrote:
| Fair point about how the funding actually works. The UC
| strike did allow for a good increase to the post-doctoral
| stipend, and the institutes likely had to move money around
| in order to make the increases possible.
|
| What's also interesting to me in the concerns raised in the
| article about how budgets (either from grants or
| universities) will cover pay increases is that this concern
| never comes up when research consumable costs increase. I had
| a friend at a major embedded systems supplier for researchers
| who spoke of the 90% mark-up they charged labs. This gets
| into a messy issue of course about pricing power and monopoly
| in scientific supplies, but its telling that as much of a
| concern is not raised in the public domain about these sorts
| of cost increases?
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| oh great. As if the scientific community wasn't corrupt and
| perversely incentivized enough.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| I think academic scientists are criminally underpaid (especially
| at the NIH), and really hope something can be done to rectify
| this. However, I don't think unionization is the way.
|
| Ultimately, unions' power comes from the threat of striking.
| Unions' demands only have teeth because of their ability to
| completely suspend economic output for an entire company or
| industry. This is possible because economic output of most
| unionized industries is collective: a factory worker has no
| personal stake in the individual widgets that s/he makes, and
| thus can dispassionately suspend widget production along with
| everyone else in the union.
|
| By contrast, science is extremely individualistic. Each "widget"
| is a scientific publication, which is directly attributed to a
| few specific contributors, and crucial for advancing an
| individual's scientific career. Thus, scientists are extremely
| passionate about their individual labor. Furthermore, science is
| often very time-sensitive -- there is a huge premium on being the
| first to publish. Time sensitivity is especially high in the life
| sciences, since experiments with living things often cannot be
| easily scheduled around a strike.
|
| Passionate, individually invested scientists are therefore much
| less likely to voluntarily suspend their work than dispassionate
| laborers in collective industries. This makes striking much less
| impactful (there will be a lot of scabs in a scientific union
| strike), thereby negating much of a scientific union's power.
|
| (Imagine -- you are an NIH postdoc working on a major publication
| in a hot field that will make or break your candidacy for a
| tenure-track faculty position. You are aware of several other
| labs working on the same project. Whoever publishes first gets
| most of the scientific accolades, and thus career advancement.
| The NIH union decides to strike. If you join the strike, it will
| set back your project, increasing the probability that one of the
| competing groups will scoop you, potentially greatly setting back
| your career. Are you going to let this happen?)
| George83728 wrote:
| Most early-career researchers are not working on their own
| individual "widget". Rather, they're working under another more
| senior researcher on a widget they have relatively little
| personal stake in.
| janeway wrote:
| All good points but here are three facts that I think are
| valid:
|
| 1. Even if salary comes from individual branches it falls under
| the institutional tree. Science is not individual.
|
| 2. Institution leaders understand that the workers are
| critical; unionised and enlightened workers will leave to
| industry for better pay. Both the hot shots and the lower
| scale.
|
| 3. While anecdotal, I had one of the best academic unions
| worldwide and probably the best academic salary worldwide. I do
| not think it is a spurious correlation.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I'm surprised this is being downvoted. It's a good point.
| soperj wrote:
| Why are they in a better place to judge? It's not like
| they're offering an alternative here.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| The pressure that a union can place on the NIH is not cutting
| off production. If basic bioscience research stopped, it would
| be years before the effects trickled out publicly.
|
| The pressure instead is social and political. Union-friendly
| politicians would haul the NIH administrators in to grill them
| about why they're blocking cures and cheating scientists.
|
| Thus, if some of the scientists in the union continue to work
| surreptitiously, it would have little impact on the
| effectiveness of the strike.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Activists can apply social and political pressure without
| being in a union. The distinguishing aspect of _union_
| activism is the union 's ability to collectively bargain,
| backed by its ability to collectively strike, with grave
| consequences to the employer.
|
| As you say, even "if basic bioscience research stopped [in
| its entirety], it would be years before the effects trickled
| out publicly." If the consequences of a strike are not grave
| to the employer (even if you could get everyone on board),
| then the power backing the union is greatly diminished.
|
| Edit: as I wrote in another post, academic union strikes can
| be quite effective at universities, where many academics
| teach in addition to performing research. A instructor strike
| can have extremely grave consequences to the university. But
| the NIH is purely a research institute, so this does not
| apply.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| A union's power is not solely in the ability to threaten to
| strike. Collective bargaining, for one. Right now, there is
| zero bargaining for postdocs over salary or benefits. You
| start work and you get the salary on the chart for your
| years of experience. How were those numbers decided? I
| don't know, but actual current postdocs had zero input.
| Simply forcing the NIH to have to sit down at a table and
| justify their (unjustifiable) numbers with the union would
| be a win.
| jancsika wrote:
| Everything you claim here applies to the careers of members
| of the writers guild. It takes years to release
| movies/shows.
|
| Yet somehow the power backing their union has historically
| not been "greatly diminished," at least not compared to
| other unions.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| There are many key differences:
|
| * A movie/show being delayed mostly has extreme financial
| consequences for the studio employer, not for the
| individual writer employees. By contrast, a scientific
| publication being delayed mostly has extreme career
| consequences for the individual scientist employees, not
| for their employer institution.
|
| * The NIH's funding comes from the US government. A
| studio's revenue comes from the audience. NIH funding is
| unlikely to decrease as the result of a researcher
| strike, whereas a studio's revenue will unequivocally
| decrease as the result of a writer strike.
|
| * Few people outside of the scientific community will
| directly perceive the consequences of NIH research being
| postponed for a few months. On the other hand, many
| people who enjoy watching movies/TV will directly feel
| the impact of favorite shows being postponed or
| cancelled.
|
| * As demonstrated in [0], the effects of the strike are
| already glaringly evident after just a month, and will be
| even more evident after a few more months.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_productions_imp
| acted_b...
| culi wrote:
| > Passionate, individually invested scientists are therefore
| much less likely to voluntarily suspend their work than
| dispassionate laborers in collective industries.
|
| Most of the actual work is done by grad school students and Phd
| workers. The same demographic that recently set a record for
| most agreement to go on strike (96+% voting in favor)
|
| I don't know where you draw your conclusions from but from my
| experience with Academia, I'd wager that you'll see much more
| solidarity than usual
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| As I wrote in another post, those graduate students were at
| universities and thus also had teaching duties in addition to
| their research positions. While the vast majority of those
| grad students vacated their teaching positions during the
| strike, many continued with their research. Academic strikes
| work well at teaching institutions, where the loss of
| instructor labor is hugely consequential to the university
| employer (and has no impact on the striking instructors'
| careers), but not at pure research institutes like the NIH.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| Isn't this something trivially resolved by the fact that
| the union members will be the researchers who can decide
| how to organize themselves? If they feel that their
| individual research priorities are more important than
| organizing for greater protections against sexual
| harassment or whatever-- that's something that can be voted
| on!
| nickff wrote:
| No, this is not a trivial problem, it is more like a
| prisoner's dilemma. A great majority of union members can
| agree that there should be a strike in favor of greater
| protections, remuneration, or benefits, but it is still
| in each of their individual interests to continue to work
| for their own benefits. Put differently, they each want
| the collective to strike, while continuing their own
| work. I suspect that a 'strike' would involve most/all of
| the members delaying submission of findings, but
| continuing any work that was 'low visibility' (i.e.
| didn't require outside resources).
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I mean, the article explicitly states that as federal
| employees they may not strike. So I presume there are
| other things they will plan, such as public
| demonstrations.
| data_acquired wrote:
| Scabs in a scientific union strike? I've routinely see it take
| months for a new joinee to get up to speed on someone else's
| project. And hiring is strictly controlled, and no one has a
| budget to suddenly hire new workers out of the blue to break a
| strike. This is a fanciful view of scientific labor. Even if
| not hiring new labor, asking another existing worker to take
| over an existing project runs into the same issues.
|
| See my other replies to your comments. The risk of being
| scooped pales in contrast to actual working condition issues.
| If being scooped was the only concern of every postdoc, there
| would be no need for a union.
|
| Finally, you deeply underestimate the amount of community
| involvement within an institute in any scientific paper.
| "Science is individualistic" in a very limited intellectual
| sense but not in a meaningful day to day basis.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| By "scabs," I mean union members continuing to work on their
| research despite a strike. People I've spoken with at
| Columbia and Harvard, which both recently had graduate
| student strikes, told me that graduate research was mostly
| business as usual during the strike, even though graduate TA
| instruction was essentially completely suspended (the latter
| is what caused the administration to acquiesce to union
| demands). For better or for worse, researchers' dedication to
| their projects is simply greater than their dedication to
| collective labor activism.
|
| >"Science is individualistic" in a very limited intellectual
| sense but not in a meaningful day to day basis.
|
| The frequent (incredibly petty) fights I've seen over
| publication authorship order demonstrate otherwise.
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is not completely true at all - unions also usually have
| an army of lawyers that will act on behalf of the members if
| needed and can be used as a pooled source of capital to lobby
| (or anti lobby against corporations).
|
| They can also provide other resources like training, pensions,
| mental health support, etc etc. Lots of benefits!
| ant6n wrote:
| Does this explain why Hollywood writing feels so factory-
| produced these days? The writers guild has turned script
| writing into a collective, dispassionate activity?
| swixmix wrote:
| > Ultimately, unions' power comes from the threat of striking.
|
| The power comes from the NLRA, a federal law, which is enforced
| by the NLRB, a federal agency. It's about agreeing to and
| enforcing a contract between the workers and the employer.
|
| Whether or not to strike then becomes a part of contract
| negotiation.
| moate wrote:
| No, it comes from the strike. Clean water doesn't come from
| the EPA, despite it regulating that water should be clean.
|
| Unions have one power in their neutered, current state:
| collectivism. That's it. It's that simple. Absent the NLRA,
| unions could still strike (and did, prior to it's passage) as
| well as any other actions their members were legally allowed
| to commit that may help. The NLRA is what corporations and
| unions agreed to stop literal violence and executions around
| the time of its passage. Frankly I think it fucking sucks and
| think labor could use a little more wild west, but I'm a
| firebrand so take that with salt.
|
| (This conversation ultimately boils down to "where do you
| believe power comes from: liberty granted from
| government/institutions, or the freedom of the individual to
| behave as he sees fit in a situation" and hat's a whole other
| philosophical can of worms)
| data_acquired wrote:
| Researcher here. I agree with your assessment of the way credit
| is given to authors, and there's a possibility of being scooped
| because folks are on strike.
|
| I think you're forgetting that there's work-related conditions
| arising from not having a union that can cause you to get
| scooped. What about being scooped because you have terrible
| insurance that requires you to spend time away from a lab or
| because you have terrible pay and can't afford a decent day-
| care for your child? Or if, as a post-doc, you have a great
| idea but your professor is a harasser and a bully who faces
| little consequences for their actions? Remember, this isn't
| industry where you can walk over to a different job with better
| work conditions. Re-starting a project from scratch is months
| if not years.
|
| And scooping is a physically survivable event. Poor insurance
| can some times literally not be a survivable event, and poor
| working conditions are a mental and physical health disaster.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| I agree that all of the working conditions you mention are
| deplorable, and must be addressed. But again, I'm not sure a
| union is the right way to go about it. Unions only have power
| to bargain for things like insurance, childcare, or strong
| anti-harassment policies because of their ability to strike,
| and strikes are only consequential if almost everyone is on
| board.
|
| For every researcher whose career is set back due to crappy
| insurance or an abusive PI, and for whom striking to advocate
| for better working conditions would be their top priority
| during a labor dispute, there are far more researchers who
| are unaffected (or indifferent) to these problems, and for
| whom finishing their project will always be their top
| priority. A strike simply won't accomplish anything if only a
| fraction of workers actually walk out.
| data_acquired wrote:
| The assumption is that the movement has built enough
| support for everyone to strike together.
|
| But a strike walk-out is one of all kinds of bizarre
| reasons one ends up getting scooped. Mice get sick,
| chemical stocks go bad, collaborators leave for personal
| reasons, etc. etc. Yes, there's a marginal increase in the
| odds that one gets scooped during a strike. Truth is, when
| it comes to transitioning to a faculty position (which is
| the point of a post-doc position), being scooped is really
| not that much of a deal. Having the big-ass discovery to
| one's name can help, yes, but what determines one's chances
| on the faculty market are a panoply of other factors too
| --- is the university looking for someone with your
| research profile? Did they have a funding cut? Is your
| advisor a famous person known to the hiring committee? etc.
| Fellows on strikes are acutely aware of the risk of getting
| scooped every minute that is spent away from the bench, but
| in the balance, its really not foremost on many folks'
| minds beyond a point.
|
| So, worst case, people get scooped in the short run. In the
| longer run, better pay + insurance means far more talent
| even considering a post-doc position and academia at all.
| As for whether unions are the way to do it, one-time
| mobilizations or strikes or nebulous pressure from the
| public are not reliable and repeatable interventions as and
| when new issues arise over time. Like, imagine a scenario
| where a one-time strike gets media attention, gets people
| more pay but only for a different administration later to
| roll things back later when the issue is gone. Unions in
| the US have legal fiat for ensuring lasting changes to
| labor contracts and can be a pretty effective intervention
| for these issues.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >Fellows on strikes are acutely aware of the risk of
| getting scooped every minute that is spent away from the
| bench, but in the balance, its really not foremost on
| many folks' minds beyond a point.
|
| FWIW, most researchers I know who were involved in
| academic strikes did not put their research on hold, but
| all of them with teaching duties _did_ walk out of that.
| This was sufficient to pressure the university to
| acquiesce to a decent portion of their demands, since
| total loss of graduate TAs /instructors is hugely
| consequential to the university. But the NIH is not a
| teaching institution, so this particular bargaining
| threat is moot.
|
| >The assumption is that the movement has built enough
| support for everyone to strike together.
|
| Perhaps we should agree to disagree on this, but per
| above, I maintain that this is an unlikely assumption at
| a pure research (i.e. non-teaching) institute.
|
| >Mice get sick, chemical stocks go bad, collaborators
| leave for personal reasons, etc. etc.
|
| These are all factors outside of an individual
| researcher's control. Few people would _voluntarily_
| decide to set back their career.
|
| >Truth is, when it comes to transitioning to a faculty
| position (which is the point of a post-doc position),
| being scooped is really not that much of a deal
|
| The point of a postdoc is to publish a handful (~1-3) of
| very high impact studies to bolster a faculty
| application. Getting scooped on even one of them can be a
| huge deal if it causes the publication to lose its
| impactfulness. I know several people in that boat,
| unfortunately--the scooping publication went to an
| absolute top-tier impact factory journal (e.g.
| Nature/Science), while the scooped paper went to a much
| lower impact factor speciality journal. Sadly, faculty
| applications are often evaluated based on the perceived
| prestige of the candidate's publications, not their
| actual contents, and while I can't say for sure that the
| scooped faculty candidates I know didn't get their ideal
| positions because they were scooped, I'd bet it was a
| nontrivial factor.
| data_acquired wrote:
| People's careers are being involuntarily set back already
| for reasons more physical and real than the _risk_ of
| being scooped.
|
| I've been scooped. It sucks. The scooped paper doesn't
| land in a big journal. It certainly knocked down the
| impact factor of the publication and my profile. The
| fraction of cases where a lack of a high impact paper
| held back a faculty applicant is likely low (see
| https://elifesciences.org/articles/54097 and similar
| surveys). I've absolutely seen folks land faculty
| positions without a crazy impact factor publication. And
| as you say, it's really hard to tell if the lack of a
| high impact factor paper holds a particular applicant
| back (see other factors I listed) in a particular case.
| So the link between high impact publication and faculty
| position is tenuous, and thus the link between being
| scooped leading to no faculty position is questionable,
| which means the risk of being scooped isn't as much of an
| issue compared to work conditions.
|
| The point you raise about practically and effectiveness
| of a strike presupposes that a union exists. And it seems
| that your claim that a research institute cannot generate
| as much solidarity as a university is a matter of belief
| rather than evidence seen elsewhere that research
| institutes have less successful unions than universities.
| Unless you know of many examples of this kind.
| petsfed wrote:
| >People's careers are being involuntarily set back
| already for reasons more physical and real than the risk
| of being scooped.
|
| This bears repeating. I know of a fairly large number of
| people who left their public-sector research positions
| because of poor working conditions. I wonder if they
| measure that as _better_ than having their careers
| hobbled by a strike-born scoop?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Unions in Germany get seats on the corporate board, about the
| same number as the shareholders do. Public universities
| receiving NIH grants are a bit different in structure, but
| there are administrative government boards of one sort or the
| other at all such institutions, and having union
| representatives on those boards makes a lot of sense. This
| would mean researchers have more say over things like how much
| overhead ius taken from individual NIH grants and how that
| overhead is spent (for things like building maintenance, etc.).
| zackmorris wrote:
| I agree, and the fallacy in the parent's argument is that
| they're only looking at one aspect of the leverage side of
| unions: strikes.
|
| But the thing is, all organizations should be unionized.
| Meaning that all employees should always have group voting
| power to prevent malfeasance against any single employee.
| Critiques of this common decency mainly come in the form of
| whataboutism, fear and othering (our wealthy investors might
| find different non-union suckers, mob-union rule could take
| away some of our obscene power, what if the workers who make
| us our money get even lazier?)
|
| The extent of union power is debatable, so maybe it makes
| sense for workers at a car company to go on strike because
| stopping production is unthinkable by the owners
| (capitalists), or maybe teachers should walk off the job
| because students should stay in school. But researchers
| walking out would have delayed consequences that might not be
| seen for half a decade.
|
| So the union power for researchers is not in strikes, but
| that it moves individual responsibility to the group, which
| has actual power to effect change. If congress isn't funding
| the NIH properly, then the union can advocate for its members
| like a lobbyist and say "hey, if you don't raise our funding,
| we'll put ads on TV criticizing the committee and individuals
| cutting our funding. We won't endorse work coming our of the
| private corporations trying to defund us. We'll challenge
| pork barrel funding that's been diverted from us in court.
| We'll.. quiet quit.."
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| If only unions in the US worked like their European
| counterparts! :(
| debacle wrote:
| How many of the top 25 tech startups were founded in
| Europe?
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Few-to-none, but what does that have to do with labor
| unions? Most European tech workers aren't unionized.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This is why sports players, actors, and other individually
| credited people in other industries don't have a union...
| nashashmi wrote:
| What is there possibly for a bunch of employees who have lived
| with status quo for so many years all of a sudden want to change?
| It is typically new employees who come in (from elsewhere?) that
| feel like changing everything around them. And then either they
| get those changes, or get comfortable with the things that exist,
| or leave.
|
| Edit: Reasons for unions historically have been better working
| conditions and better wages, but those were for labor unions.
| Desk jockeys had different motivations for workplace changes,
| like better treatment of their work efforts, or more meaningful
| work hours. Better Wages are not it.
| kashunstva wrote:
| Sure, they may have lived with the status quo, but the external
| environment, dominated by housing costs has in now way been
| status quo. I imagine that the delta is what is motivating
| action.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > but those were for labor unions. Desk jockeys had different
| motivations...
|
| Desk labor is labor. And us desk jockeys most definitely need
| to unionize to improve and/or prevent deterioration of our
| working conditions and wages (and when I say "our wages" I
| don't mean just the star developers, I mean everyone).
| Similarly, all laborers, at the desk and at the assembly line,
| strive for better treatment of our work efforts, the ability to
| perform meaningful and less alienated work, etc.
| matthewowen wrote:
| Are you sure you read the article closely enough? These are
| early career researchers: grad students and postdocs. These are
| generally roles someone holds for no more than 6 years, often
| less. They _are_ all new employees.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Yes they are all new employees. Funny either I read it wrong
| or the headline changed. I thought it said NIH employees who
| had been with the firm for long time.
| delfinom wrote:
| Or you know, instead of crying about change like you are.
| Existing employees finally cracked. The STM part of STEM has
| been seriously underpaid and meager living for years. All of
| that is coming home to roost with inflation and cost of living
| spiraling out of control.
| FredPret wrote:
| Underpayment would lead to less inflation if anything.
| [deleted]
| MaKey wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| Inflation might not be driven by wages but by company
| profits:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/24/an-
| economic...
| FredPret wrote:
| You know your own logic can beat that of others right?
| Citations are just links to places where other people
| wrote down their logic and aren't magic fairy dust
| that'll make an argument true.
|
| People geting paid more is inflationary. People producing
| more output is deflationary. We need lots of both.
|
| Company profits come from things being produced and then
| bought. So when profits are paid out to owners and
| employees as salaries, dividends, and other mechanisms,
| it gets filed under "people getting paid".
|
| Now my main point is that if S, T and M have been
| underpaid vs their true output, they should get more.
| nightski wrote:
| Where do you think company profits come from if not from
| customers?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Some central banks take measures in order to reduce the
| spending of consumers in order to calm down inflation.
| Which means less money for customers. So maybe it makes
| sense?
| foooorsyth wrote:
| The E part of STEM is typically the commercial application of
| STM, so why would that be a surprise? This is the nature of
| research: most efforts will be pretty useless, and even the
| useful ones will need significant additional focus, effort,
| investment, and labor to create a viable commercial product.
| rfrey wrote:
| The assumption that only commercialization efforts are
| deserving of rewards, and the labour to discover and make
| viable the things that are being sold are not deserving of
| rewards, is one that needs reflection.
| gowings97 wrote:
| "The STM part of STEM has been seriously underpaid and meager
| living for years."
|
| Based on what?
| iso1337 wrote:
| NIH should build more institutes in cheaper areas (eg not NoVa).
| It's a win win since it will help revitalize poorer areas of
| America and save on costs.
|
| It will also tilt more senators/congresspeople to vote for NIH
| funding, similar to military base funding
| alistairSH wrote:
| NIH isn't in NoVA. It's across the river in Bethesda, MD.
|
| The problem with opening remote locations is attracting people.
| Montgomery County, MD (where Bethesda is located) and the
| broader DC metro region has lots of biotech, medical, and
| software opportunities.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Not relevant at all. Many locations are stronger than the DC
| area. Just an example of NIH inertia. There are many.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| But the traffic is a _nightmare_ (I-270 is the Tenth Circle
| of Hell).
|
| Like most high-density commute areas, homes close to work are
| pricey, so people have to live in the boondocks, and commute.
|
| I know people that live in Frederick, and commute to DC.
|
| Of course, Frederick has Ft. Detrick. That's a fun place. I
| think it was the model for the biolab in _The Stand_.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _so people have to live in the boondocks_
|
| Homes are pricey, no question. But, DC is one of the more
| affordable top-tier cities in the US. Especially if your
| work is in the suburbs.
|
| For software people, you can buy a reasonable[1] TH in
| Reston for around $600k and have a reasonable commute to
| most of the NoVA tech corridor. Or Metro downtown. Or ride
| your bike to many employment centers. Or, if you're really
| lucky, you can walk to quite a few employers in Reston
| (Google, MS, Ellucian, Walmart Labs, various three-letter
| agency IT offices, etc).
|
| 1 - mid-70s build, 3-bed, 2.5 bath, 1500-1800sqft, in a
| good school district and with walk/bike access to schools,
| grocery/pharmacy, many doctors, and Metro.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sigh... It's sad to see a $600K townhouse in Reston
| termed "reasonable."
|
| I know a lot of folks on this site are from the Bay Area,
| where something like that would probably be twice that,
| but it's actually more expensive than around here, which
| is considered one of the more expensive areas to live.
|
| It's astounding to see kids out of college, starting at
| more than I ever made, in my career, and yet, they can't
| afford to buy a house.
|
| But I'm not one to talk. My father never made more than
| $40K, and had a house in Potomac, two cars, and a stay-
| at-home wife.
| metaphor wrote:
| > _But, DC is one of the more affordable top-tier cities
| in the US._
|
| Is it?
|
| This 2023 study[1] featured on Bloomberg[2] ranked DC at
| #7 of 76 most expensive large cities in the nation,
| requiring $245k gross pay to feel like $100k after
| normalizing taxes and cost of living.
|
| [1] https://smartasset.com/data-studies/new-100k-how-
| taxes-costs...
|
| [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-15/ma
| king-30...
| alistairSH wrote:
| I'll see if I can dig out the source, but the study I saw
| had COL vs incomes.
|
| IE, DC is expensive, but also pays extremely well.
| underlipton wrote:
| People could just live in PG.
| ghaff wrote:
| And it's an even bigger issue once professional specialists
| have partners and families. Even elite schools in relatively
| remote from major population center areas have long had some
| trouble attracting faculty whose partners may well be
| inevitably underemployed if they move to the small town/city
| where the school is.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Disagree again. Here are some towns and smaller cities that
| more than rival DC.
|
| Ann Arbor, Davis, Durham, Urbana, Princeton, New Haven,
| Memphis, Madison, Portland, Eugene, Nashville, Kansas
| City...
| svnt wrote:
| The data for much of this list of cities has changed
| substantially in the past two to three years. Many of
| these are now unaffordable for someone on $45k/year, and
| they do not have the employment robustness of the larger
| metros.
| dekhn wrote:
| this is called "the two body problem"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career) in
| reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem
| and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
| ghaff wrote:
| I didn't know it had a name. But having been associated
| with both Dartmouth and Cornell, I've definitely heard
| complaints about the issue.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Bravo for this start at unionizing. Important step forward---
| finally.
|
| I made $13,500 as a postdoc at Yale (New Haven CT) from 1983 to
| 1985. $75/month went back to Yale for family health. Even the
| rent was $525/month.
|
| That scales to roughly $38,070 per year today. And my pay as a
| grad student at UC Davis was $325/month for my last three
| years. No taxes--whoopee. Talk about delayed gratification.
|
| Agreed: NIEHS is in North Carolina. NIA is in Baltimore. More
| of this please. And yes, this does engender strong local and
| state support. ORNL in Tennessee is a case in point.
|
| East Tennessee has Oak Ridge National Labs and the region
| around Knoxville is gorgeous. So why not move the National Eye
| Institute (NEI) and the National Institute on Deafness and
| Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) there ;-) in this Zoom
| day-and-age.
| 6DM wrote:
| Until we normalize working for a company until we're ready to
| retire, I don't even see that as an option. What am I gonna do
| 3-4 years later? That's why I won't leave the city, because I
| know when it's time to look again there are plenty of jobs
| close by and I won't have to uproot the whole family.
| uncletaco wrote:
| I work for a national lab and in my experience it will take a
| lot for someone to give up a place like the Eastbay for East
| Tennessee. If the national lab were near Nashville that might
| be different. Los Alamos has to give software developers a
| sizeable bonus each year just to keep them from flying to
| greener pasteurs in a less remote location. I know I left
| partly because my wife had such a hard time finding work and
| the remoteness made the area too expensive for what we were
| getting out of it socially and careerwise.
| pnpnp wrote:
| I've thought about this a lot, so thanks for getting the
| neurons firing again. In my case, I worked for some agencies
| and had an absolute blast. In this phase of my life, I'm
| living somewhere else & would fight tooth and nail to stay
| here.
|
| I wonder if it would be worth it from a talent perspective to
| create more, larger, and strategically placed SCIFs
| (Sensitive compartmented information facility) around the
| country so that there was less of a physical requirement for
| information workers to commute every day.
|
| Some of the jobs I worked were a blast with really great and
| interesting people. I do miss it, but would never move back
| to the physical locations required.
| [deleted]
| robwwilliams wrote:
| ORNL region is gorgeous and there are plenty of jobs and
| relatively inexpensive housing.
| petsfed wrote:
| Its gorgeous for _some_. My own experiences in the Ozarks
| made it a non-starter for me. Its hard to calculate the
| exact impact it had on me, but I do wonder if I would 've
| worked harder in grad school if I wasn't actively dreading
| actually getting the most prestigious research positions in
| my field (I was studying material science of optical and
| electronic materials at the time).
|
| Granted, a lot of academia is repeating "just keep going,
| the end is in sight" until you die, but it is frustrating
| that it has to be that way.
| Retric wrote:
| Military personnel move where you tell them, manufacturing jobs
| can train people up just about anywhere, but research isn't so
| simple.
|
| It's a real chicken and egg problem around local talent.
| Bethesda/Rockville/Baltimore has several different
| organizations doing medical research which makes the attractive
| locations for researchers to live. Locate in say Boise Idaho
| and positions are open for longer and you will need to
| compromise more in terms of talent.
|
| On top of this there's a huge pool of government contractors
| which again provides significant advantages.
| rflrob wrote:
| I think the biomedical academic job market is tight enough
| that you could fairly easily attract a strong class of
| researchers to nearly any second tier city. Maybe not the
| best of the best of the best (at first), but there's enough
| bright people doing 6+ year post docs that you'll recruit
| junior faculty in a flash.
|
| Credentials: did my PhD and postdoc at R1 institutions,
| before going to greener pastures in industry.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| There is no best-of-the-best at this stage. Only those who
| seem hyper bright. Success in biomedical research is much
| more about other factors--persistence and inquisitiveness
| being two that are crucial.
| petsfed wrote:
| Boise (and elsewhere in Idaho) is _thriving_ when it comes to
| materials research and agricultural research, because of the
| combined influence of Micron and Simplot. So its ultimately a
| question of what kind of industry you want to talk about.
|
| But the issue still remains: if your industry relies on your
| workforce moving every 5 years or so, and does not itself
| involve travel, then you have a structural problem.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Disagree. We have FedEx and Zoom now. My own intimate
| research community is now 8+ time zones--16 hours if you
| count where our RNA samples are sequenced.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| How often are you grabbing a coffee or lunch (over Zoom)
| with randomish subsets of that community?
| michaelt wrote:
| Los Alamos National Lab is a 12,700 person [1] government
| research facility in a town of 13,200 population [2]. Median
| household income $98k, highest millionaire concentration of
| any US city, highest percentage of people with doctorate
| degrees in the nation. Nearest IKEA store? 500 miles away.
|
| A government lab can get scientists to relocate their
| families to the middle of nowhere. All it takes is a budget
| of $3.92 billion or $300k per job.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico
| pnpnp wrote:
| Is that budget salary-only? They have some mighty expensive
| material requirements for some of their projects.
| michaelt wrote:
| No, that's the budget for everything - salaries,
| equipment, grants given to outside bodies, and so on.
|
| I mention it merely because, although LANL demonstrates
| the state _can_ create pockets of prosperity in poorer
| places by moving science jobs, we should not imagine that
| it 's particularly _cheap_.
|
| The LANL example also doesn't show economic success
| spreading out from the lab, in the way Silicon Valley is
| sometimes seen as spreading out from defence research and
| Stanford University. Of course, LANL is deliberately
| geographically isolated, and you wouldn't _expect_
| startup spin-outs from a top secret nuclear research lab.
| kkylin wrote:
| By all accounts it's very hard for grad students and
| postdocs at LANL (much less locals) to find affordable
| short-term housing near LANL due to (1) the very small
| amount of housing available and (2) enough people leaving
| the lab but continuing to live there while taking up remote
| work in tech. This is despite LANL paying relatively well
| (as you noted) to try to keep talent from moving into other
| industries (tech, finance).
|
| Not to say that government investment can't make people
| move, but it creates problems too, not least for locals.
|
| Source: mainly anecdotal, from talking to people at LANL at
| various career stages on a recent visit.
| tomrod wrote:
| Seems like this would be addressable by the government
| making affordable living facilities.
| ecshafer wrote:
| That sounds like an issue with local zoning, otherwise
| the market would fix that issue.
| jfoutz wrote:
| I haven't been there in a while, but last I recall, they
| sort of ran out of land. It's very hilly, the airport
| basically ends at a cliff. A lot of the land is
| government controlled and fenced off to provide buffer
| for secure areas.
|
| A lot of land around that is national park/BLM land, and
| not accessible. So you've got like, white rock, espanola
| or Santa Fe to commute in from. I did know a guy who had
| a light plane and would commute from the east side of
| Albuquerque to Los alamos by plane.
|
| So, sort of like local zoning, but more like DC. an act
| of congress to free up some of that land, not as
| straightforward as visiting some city council meetings.
| LeanderK wrote:
| why not increase density? it looks like single family
| home zoning. A denser core would surely be possible
| michaelt wrote:
| Taking a look at some randomly selected roads in Google
| Street View [1], it looks like it's been built at
| _extremely_ low density, by most standards.
|
| I mean, if you've building a single-storey home, then
| putting a double garage on the side, then a gap between
| properties two cars wide, plus a driveway with parking
| for two cars, then on-road parking for 3 more cars? Of
| course you're going to run out of land fast.
|
| I've no idea whether it's a zoning issue, though.
|
| [1] https://goo.gl/maps/ZCtDFNsaoe5ePsp16
| https://goo.gl/maps/tTRb7vzw5mVHskHHA etc
| dlivingston wrote:
| Los Alamos is on a mesa, with cliffs on one side and
| Jemez mountains on the other.
|
| There were some local controversies related to zoning
| when I was there (namely, commercial real estate), but
| the issue is much broader and long-standing.
|
| I used to work for a PI who, during his internship days
| in the ~1980s, lived in a tent in the mountains the whole
| summer (he was a delightfully quirky person though).
| Retric wrote:
| Los Alamos got kickstarted in WWII when the government
| literally got to tell physicists where to go and it became
| a major hub of such research.
|
| That might work if the NIH wanted to spend 50% of it's
| budget in one location, but their proposal was to spread
| across not just one second tier city but dozens of such
| locations.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Were Manhattan project scientists really ordered around
| like that? Was anyone working at Los Alamos against their
| will?
| Retric wrote:
| I don't know.
|
| The scientists apparently had some wiggle room: _An offer
| was made to the Princeton team to be redeployed there.
| "Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later
| recalled, "we signed up, en masse, to go to Los Alamos."_
|
| But the subtext was there was a draft going on and most
| of them would be eligible unless they were working on
| such a critical project.
| Melatonic wrote:
| We need more labor unions in general - hell yea!
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| [flagged]
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >We all know how Republicans feel about federal workers.
|
| It was a democrat that busted the rail strikes. Both parties
| despise unions, one is just more vocal about it.
| tyingq wrote:
| Railways and airlines are a little different than other
| unions with the Railway Labor Act...it was specifically
| designed to avoid strikes. Meaning both parties might be more
| aligned around their opinions on union activity for railways
| and airlines, but still diverge for other types of unions.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Maybe that's the key, lower headcounts but professionals paid
| private market rates with private market rate benefits,
| trimming down won't necessarily drop quality.
| Eumenes wrote:
| [flagged]
| brynx97 wrote:
| Not all public unions are the same, I would discourage
| generalization. Federal public unions are very different from
| local and state public unions.
|
| My wife's public union in a federal agency is a great tool
| for them to leverage when dealing with exceptional issues
| outside the normal channels and processes. Federal
| bureaucracy can be slow, and it can also be impractical when
| dealing with various things. As mentioned elsewhere in the
| thread and the article, a _federal_ public union and their
| members can 't strike, and they generally cannot directly
| negotiate increased pay since it is congressionally
| controlled.
| hirundo wrote:
| "All Government employees should realize that the process of
| collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be
| transplanted into the public service." - Franklin Roosevelt
|
| https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-
| resolut...
| Angostura wrote:
| It's an interesting argument, suggesting that government
| could simply pay workers 1c per year and that any attempt
| to address this by the workers by - say - a strike would be
| "unthinkable and intolerable"
| Eumenes wrote:
| [flagged]
| linuxftw wrote:
| Trump was more left-wing than Bill Clinton, it's just
| that one party has actually turned into extremists while
| ironically labeling the other side extremists.
| davemp wrote:
| The teacher union seems to be mostly ineffective based on
| what I've seen/heard in my county. My county literally hires
| teaching contractors at a significantly higher rate than
| union teachers because it is such an unattractive job.
| Somehow the union still fails to negotiate a salary within
| $20k of the state median.
|
| --- Tangential Rant:
|
| Look into your county's education budget and it might
| surprise you. In mine, the yearly budget is $1.5B and only
| about $900M goes to actual school operations (everything from
| ~300 principles, ~6k teachers, 64 physical/occupational
| therapists, IT, TAs, and benefits). Another ~$70M goes to bus
| contractors that can't accommodate reasonable start times
| across the grade levels. ~$30M goes to facility
| maintenance/construction/planning. Most of the left over is
| bloat that manages useless initiatives, flirts with ed-
| tech/curriculum grifters, marketers/comms/etc, and weird pork
| that doesn't belong in an education budget. That's like
| $300-400M/yr in bloat at just the county level (assuming at
| least some of the left over provides actual value).
|
| It's embarrassing that these administrators get paid 2-4x the
| teachers, but still fail to staff schools properly with a
| $1.5B budget for ~80k students.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The problem being that public spending for new shiny projects
| is much easier to sell to the public than required
| maintenance. Without a strong voice how would public workers
| ever get enough leverage to earn even cost of living
| adjustments?
| Eumenes wrote:
| We should be trying to optimize public services, even if
| that means cutting staff. This is an area where we should
| 100% leverage AI and automation. Tax dollars shouldn't be
| used as charity to employ administrative staff. Many states
| are having problem with pension debts. These public unions
| also refuse to act on productivity or performance
| measurements. Perhaps some sort of bipartisanship
| Congressional committee for federal workers could be
| useful, with state and local level peer committees.
| softsound wrote:
| Ah yes AI and Automation the solution to all problems.
| It's basically impossible to directly talk to anyone in
| my state because of that when it comes to unemployment.
| What's worse is a 3rd party was hired to basically say
| they can't do anything but tell you if your account is
| either good or not. Sometimes it's nice to be able to
| talk to someone who has some power in the system.
|
| If you mess up in the system good luck figuring it out
| for a few months. I think my state has had investigations
| over had bad it is. What's really stupid is unemployment
| fined me at some point but my unemployment insurance
| covered it as I had like $10k in my unemployment account
| the state agree I qualified for that I eventually gave up
| trying to use as I couldn't get these two parties within
| unemployment to agree. So I was qualified just unable to
| qualify. At least I didn't have to pay anything as
| unemployment covered it and I'm employed now but what a
| horrible system. I did attempt to go to go to court over
| this, major waste of time too. Especially because their
| own system failed with the original court date so they
| rescheduled for 4 months later. Huge mess. Don't ever be
| unemployed and you are fine though. Or move out of Texas
| I guess. I'm glad I had savings but I feel for those who
| don't. It's way too easy screw up in these systems.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| See, even here the impulse is immediately to suggest
| cutting staff and directly saying that paying public
| servants is charity. You didn't addressed my point in
| terms of CoL adjustments. How does adding AI enure that
| high performance, productive staff members get these
| adjustments without it being viewed as a waste of tax
| dollars by the public?
| Eumenes wrote:
| I wouldn't suggest AI making policy decisions, but
| replacing jobs at the post office or DMV. You aren't
| entitled to a job. Congress can vote on CoL adjustments
| for workers, both at the state and federal levels. Right
| now, its pay to play - the unions, some of the largest
| political contributors in the US, just pay (bribe) the
| representatives to advocate for them, in return for
| donations to campaigns.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > You aren't entitled to a job.
|
| Total non-sequitur. I didn't say anyone was. Not everyone
| is entitled to a job, but as you said in regards to
| policy decisions, there are jobs that are required. A lot
| of the mail service still needs to exist. We are nowhere
| near machines delivering the mail to people. And those
| people need to be paid and they need to live on that
| paycheck.
|
| > Congress can vote on CoL adjustments for workers, both
| at the state and federal levels.
|
| Yes, this is the mechanism, but that doesn't explain why
| or how they'd want to go with an adjustment. It's a bad
| look for a politician to give people a CoL adjustment -
| many people see it as their wage being stolen to pay
| another. I'm not saying that unions are the answer, but
| how do these workers have a voice when the public
| actively doesn't want them to be paid more?
| bourneavent wrote:
| Software engineers should do this. We got complacent with the
| high pay but we were never really in control. Recent layoffs
| would be less likely to happen were it not for unions.
| maedayx wrote:
| fully agree - I've been mulling this over a lot recently,
| actually. It seems like the writing is on the wall in a couple
| ways (recent layoffs being a big one)
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| It's not going to work. The NIH has no equivalent private sector
| competitor. For every single researcher, there are 10 other
| graduates and staff who would be willing to do their job for a
| fraction of the cost. This is a supply and demand problem, a
| funding problem. Strip congress and the medical board of their
| ability to control the number of residency spots and you will see
| the free market correct itself. Most biology people's first
| career choice is medicine, not working in research.
|
| The only protection they have is the fact that it is hard to get
| fired from a government job.
| sybercecurity wrote:
| From the article, they may not be staff. Many research agencies
| have "fellow" or "associate" positions that aren't full time
| staff. Similar to a contractor but used for postdoc, graduate
| students, etc. Sometimes on the path to FTE status, but not
| always. Could also be non-citizens on a visa for their term.
|
| Pay (think stipend, not salary) for these positions are more
| than what a grad student would get from their university, but
| not much more. At least from what I've seen (don't know details
| of NIH). For postdocs/grads/etc without families this can work,
| but cost of living in the DC area is high.
| einpoklum wrote:
| That's one of the struggles for the union to conduct. Part-
| time, junior, temporary staff - are staff, and should be
| recognized as staff, with the full set of rights and benefits
| befitting their position and their needs as people and as
| professionals.
|
| And the same goes for junior research staff at universities
| (assistants, fellows, post-docs etc).
| WhatsName wrote:
| Sounds like the sweet spot for a union. Having bargain power
| would be a quantum leap for all those workers. As a european,
| where unions are commonplace and a main driving force behind
| minimum wages, I find it odd for any worker not to join a union
| if there is the chance.
| matthewowen wrote:
| This is poorly informed.
|
| There are many viable alternatives for these researchers. For
| starters, all the other academic institutions! Which have their
| own problems, but have been increasing salaries for graduate
| students and post docs in response to organization (eg Penn
| just raised biomedical postdoc salaries in large part because
| of the threat of unionization, and in large part because of the
| competitive threat of other institutions who've increased
| salaries).
|
| But beyond that, private sector is absolutely a viable
| alternative. People don't make their choices in a vacuum, they
| choose the academia path because it fits their long term goal
| and it's worth the short term costs.
|
| It's also not even remotely true that being an MD is the first
| choice for researchers: of the people I know in research at
| prestigious institutions, it is a mix of MD-PhDs and people who
| only ever wanted to do research. There's absolutely not some
| huge population of thwarted doctors getting prestigious postdoc
| positions.
| dguest wrote:
| I agree with your last point. I suspect MD is a popular
| option _because_ it has job stability and good pay (which is
| likely related to the scarcity of MDs in the US).
|
| In my field (another type of research) a lot of people "want"
| to be professors, but when I talk to them there's no interest
| in teaching or doing administrative work, they just want job
| stability. If research jobs were stable they would happily
| spend the rest of their lives doing research.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Outside of the overfunded Ivies, Stanford and MIT, most other
| state schools and academic institutions do not have the
| ability to absorb the sheer quantity of researchers employed
| by NIH.
|
| > _It's also not even remotely true that being an MD is the
| first choice for researchers_
|
| You should try talking to some actual graduates in the life
| sciences department at your local state school, and not just
| MD-PHDs. I am willing to bet money that the number of non-
| medical biology researchers whose number one choice is
| medicine outnumbers wannabe researchers.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| > You should try talking to some actual graduates in the
| life sciences department at your local state school, and
| not just MD-PHDs. I am willing to bet money that the number
| of non-medical biology researchers whose number one choice
| is medicine outnumbers wannabe researchers.
|
| I want to credit your point and believe what you're saying,
| but the burden of proof is on you to give evidence that
| most Biology researchers want to be in medicine.
| shpongled wrote:
| > You should try talking to some actual graduates in the
| life sciences department at your local state school, and
| not just MD-PHDs. I am willing to bet money that the number
| of non-medical biology researchers whose number one choice
| is medicine outnumbers wannabe researchers.
|
| As a biochem PhD holder, you're really gonna have to back
| this up.
| matthewowen wrote:
| My wife is nearing the end of her postdoc (cell biology).
| I've known her since she was 18 years old. She never wanted
| to be an MD. Neither did the colleagues of hers I talked
| to.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Try a bigger sample size. I have seen countless life
| science graduates switch into software engineering
| precisely because of medical school admissions and the
| rest of the industry and academia being a career dead
| end.
| maxbond wrote:
| You told them they should talk to some life sciences
| graduates. They relayed that they knew several such
| people. And now you're telling them the experiment you
| proposed is anecdotal and not meaningful, seemingly
| because it didn't produce the result you wanted.
|
| Another approach would have been to say, "interesting, my
| experience differs," and then to compare notes.
|
| For instance, is it the case that you're a software
| engineer who occasionally meets people who've pivoted
| into software engineering from life sciences? That could
| be a very different sample than someone who's spouse has
| successfully gained traction in the field (with neither
| being representative, as they're subject to complementary
| survivorship biases). Seems likely to me that there's
| something to be learned from both perspectives here.
| dguest wrote:
| The union is actually for the 10 other people who will fill
| this staff position.
|
| > The union, called NIH Fellows United, would include about
| 4,800 research fellows, such as graduate students and postdocs,
| who hold non-permanent staff positions at the agency's 27
| institutes and centres.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Strip congress and the medical board of their ability to
| control the number of residency spots and you will see the free
| market correct itself.
|
| This is nonsensical. Residency spots are not controlled by the
| government. _Government funding_ for residency spots is
| controlled by Congress, because Congress is responsible for all
| government spending.
|
| The only way to have Congress less involved in residency spots
| would be to eliminate all government funding for residency
| programs, but that would have the opposite effect of what you
| likely want, because residency programs by and large lose money
| (that's why Congress provides the subsidy in the first place).
| bourneavent wrote:
| >For every single researcher, there are 10 other graduates and
| staff who would be willing to do their job for a fraction of
| the cost.
|
| This is what unions are supposed to fix. If the researcher and
| 10 graduates are under a union the company has to literally
| pick the best one, not the cheapest one because the union
| guarantees reasonable pay.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Institutions stand to lose enormous amounts of money if NIH
| researchers go on strike. The reason: delayed clinical trials.
|
| Even more important, in particular this case the individual
| researcher stand little to loose, since those trials are mostly
| multi center, multi stakeholders and the individual research
| drone does not get much credit for its contribution.
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