Meet the Bargaining Committee

Grace Flores-Robles

I am a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Psychology. One of my goals as a member of the bargaining committee is to help make our union more accessible. For many people, unions can feel abstract or intimidating, especially if they are not already familiar with organizing. I want to help ensure that all postdocs feel welcome participating, sharing their concerns, and shaping the priorities we bring to the bargaining table. As a member of the bargaining committee, I will represent the concerns of postdocs while helping build the collective power that will allow us to win a strong contract. Strong bargaining depends not just on the bargaining committee, but on engaged membership from postdocs.

Kwan Yin Lee

Being a postdoc is becoming a more precarious position every day. Our conditions won’t get better magically. It’s up to all of us here to ensure that postdocs now and in the future can continue to be provided with the resources they need to succeed. We can either leave this place better or worse than when we arrived. The choice is easy for me because our work is important. Don’t let the people who want to shortchange us convince you otherwise. We are no different than postdocs at Columbia, Mount Sinai, Weill Cornell who have already won better wages and work protections than us because of strong participation in their unions. They won and we can too. We currently have a unique opportunity to fight for improved work conditions, improved benefits, improved compensation, things that will reverberate far into the future, beyond each of our tenures at Princeton. I’ve been working with many of you since the beginning. Our efforts led to the successful formation of PUPS-UAW. Because of this, I’ve spoken to many of you personally and a fair contract is something that the majority of us want. As a part of the bargaining committee, I can guarantee that I’ll keep fighting for the best contract possible. We are incredibly close. Let’s make Princeton the best place for postdocs in the country!

Hanna Ehrlich

As a public health researcher, I understand that our health and wellbeing are shaped by the social, political, and economic conditions in which we live and work. Labor organizing is one way we can collectively transform those conditions. For postdocs, whose employment is often deeply precarious, strong unions are critical to securing our safety, stability, and livelihoods.

Before joining Princeton, I served as campus chair of UAW 5810 (now UAW 4811) at UC Davis, the nation’s first and largest postdoctoral union. While there, I organized new worker orientations to build membership, handled grievances over contract violations, and helped lead two statewide unfair labor practice strikes. Building on decades of organizing, these collective actions helped secure historic, industry-setting protections that have raised standards for postdocs everywhere.

As a member of Princeton’s Bargaining Committee, I am committed to setting a strong precedent in our first contract, one that protects our most vulnerable colleagues and raises the standards for everyone in our unit. I know this will require conversation, collaboration, and collective action, at and beyond the bargaining table. A contract is only as strong as our ability to mobilize, and I will work to build a strong community of rank-and-file organizers with the collective power to win the wages, benefits, and working conditions we deserve.

Oscar Gonzalez

My name is Oscar Gonzalez, and I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Princeton Materials Institute. I earned my Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley, where I was a member of UAW Local 4811. As a member of the bargaining committee, I’m fighting for a contract that protects all of us from sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination — one that gives us real recourse and ensures we are taken seriously. Princeton needs to recognize that we matter, and that means a contract we can be proud of. We deserve a seat at the table and a real voice in the decisions that shape our working lives.

Ryan Manzuk

I received my Ph.D. from Princeton’s Department of Geosciences before accepting a postdoc position in the Program on Science and Global Security. Switching roles within the university showed me the importance of organizing postdocs as a labor force. At the stage in our careers when we leverage our training to perform more impactful research and take on broader departmental responsibilities, our working conditions actually become more precarious. While becoming a postdoc brings a modest salary increase, the added costs of unsubsidized housing, healthcare premiums, and student loans coming out of deferment more than offset that gain.

This is why bargaining matters. A strong contract is our best tool for protecting all of our colleagues — international postdocs whose immigration status is tied to their employer, postdocs with families navigating inadequate parental leave and childcare costs, and those planning their next project or class with no guaranteed renewal. We need enforceable protections: transparent reappointment processes, minimum salaries indexed to cost of living, subsidized healthcare, and clear grievance procedures. These aren’t luxuries. They are baseline conditions that allow people to focus on the research this university depends on.

Umut Kamber

I am an Associate Research Scholar at the Department of Physics, and a member of the Bargaining Committee of Princeton University Postdocs and Scholars (PUPS). I have had the privilege to study, work, and live in three different countries (Turkey, the Netherlands, and the US) throughout my career, giving me a great opportunity to build comparative knowledge around different work/social cultures. Such an experience created many chances for me to engage with my colleagues and have long conversations about the difficulties we have faced. This made me realize that we have so many common problems, and many of which can be resolved relatively easily once we come together and start building ideas (which is what we are good at!). Hence, I joined PUPS and worked as a local department organizer last year, and then later joined the organizing committee. My goal is to help build a long-lasting postdocs and scholars community at Princeton University, that will engage in constructive conversations, create ideas to improve our work and life conditions, and communicate them with the management to ensure that we can get the most out of our time here in Princeton.