Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 151 posts

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#61

Post by kkylin »

michaelt wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 bi…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#62

Post by dguest »

matthewowen wrote: post #39
KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #16

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 biolo…

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…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#63

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

alistairSH wrote: post #49
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

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…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#64

Post by kkylin »

data_acquired wrote: post #58

>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 universiti…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#65

Post by Retric »

michaelt wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 bi…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#66

Post by data_acquired »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59
data_acquired wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 terr…

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 t…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#67

Post by pnpnp »

uncletaco wrote: post #45
iso1337 wrote: post #13

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

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…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#68

Post by pnpnp »

michaelt wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 bi…

Is that budget salary-only? They have some mighty expensive material requirements for some of their projects.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#69

Post by softsound »

Eumenes wrote: post #34
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

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.

Re: Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time

#70

Post by data_acquired »

kkylin wrote: post #64
data_acquired wrote: post #58

>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 universiti…

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 a…

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?

Post reply on HN