Our Post-Docs are unionizing!

[Kron3007]

Our postdoc situation here (Canadian University) is pretty bad.  The floor is currently 33 000 CAD (26 332 USD), not much more than minimum wage, and there are a number of labour related issues other than money.  Some make much more, but others make the base level.  The cost of living here is not low, so it is pretty tough to make ends meet on this salary. 

I made about 32 000 CAD when I was a postdoc about ten years ago and do not feel that it was a reasonable salary.

[Aster]

Ouch. $26k?? How common is that rate in Canada?

[Parasaurolophus]

Ouch. $26k?? How common is that rate in Canada?

That was the provincially-funded postdoc salary I turned down (actually, it was ~$24k USD). The federally-funded one I accepted instead was ~$32k USD, as I said, and so were the departmentally-funded ones I've seen. Government funding schemes for other fields might be a bit better.

[Kron3007]

Ouch. $26k?? How common is that rate in Canada?

That was the provincially-funded postdoc salary I turned down (actually, it was ~$24k USD). The federally-funded one I accepted instead was ~$32k USD, as I said, and so were the departmentally-funded ones I've seen. Government funding schemes for other fields might be a bit better.

It seems that NSERC (science and engineering) and SSHRC (arts and social sciences) have increased it to 45k CAD (~36K USD).  I dont know about CIHR (medical).  These are the federally funded fellowships, and are often used as justification to offer that, or less, for grant funded positions.  These federal rates also make it hard to submit a grant proposal with higher salaries since the reviewers will question why you are paying so much.However, when I got an NSERC fellowship (32K USD at the time), my advisor did pitch in an additional 8K USD so many federally funded postdocs make more than the baseline.  That was good, but even that felt a little low. 

In my department, there is the minimum (~26K USD) but it is up to the PI to decide from there so we end up with a huge disparity.  Postdoc salaries in my university range from 33K CAD up to 70k CAD (26-56k USD).  I'm sure some of this is related to field of study, but there is no oversight to ensure equity and it is not unusual to hear of postdocs, especially international scholars, in pretty bad situations (both financial and working conditions).