Despite Legal Concerns, Biden Let Government Scientists Join United Auto Workers Before Securing Union’s Endorsement

 As Joe Biden courted the crucial endorsement of the United Auto Workers, his administration allowed government scientists to join the blue-collar union, ignoring legal concerns.

The Biden administration permitted graduate students doing temporary work for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to unionize, despite initially stating that they were ineligible because they were not even employees. The white-collar academics have since become a highly political and radically-Democratic faction within the auto workers union, which is otherwise losing membership.

The reversal came as Biden “systematically courted” the endorsement of UAW honcho Shawn Fain, who had been critical of the president, but came through with the endorsement soon after the NIH move.

The UAW has turned to students and academics, despite having little in common with blue-collar factory workers, to offset the hemorrhaging of its membership after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allowed teaching assistants at private universities to unionize. More than a quarter of “auto workers” union members now actually work in academia.

NLRB decisions don’t apply to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), which governs federal employee unions.

In June 2023, graduate student-level research fellows affiliated with NIH petitioned the FLRA to grant permission to hold an election to decide whether some 5,000 early-career scientists could unionize. 

NIH submitted paperwork to FLRA opposing the move, the union organizers said. Science reported at the time that the FLRA argued the temporary academics were not actually employees and therefore not eligible under the law to unionize.

“The Agency is of the view that individuals in all categories appointed under the CRTA [Cancer Research Training Award] and IRTA [Intramural Research Training Award] authorities, i.e., all categories other than Clinical Fellows, Research Fellows, and Senior Research Fellows, are not employees under the Statute,” the Biden administration’s document said.

A post-baccalaureate fellow, Emilya Ventriglia, acknowledged that the NIH program was akin to a training program that included “workshops and… different aspects of training us to be scientists. But I do fail to see how that negates us being workers.”

But the NIH dropped its objection days later after consulting with the Department of Health and Human Services.

“NIH has accepted the petition to include all individuals described and stands ready to work … on an Election Agreement,” Science reported on August 10, 2023. The agency did not explain why what previously was illegal “under the Statute” was suddenly not, except to say that the reversal came “after additional consultation with HHS.”

In December, FLRA certified the new union, a move that stood to steer millions of dollars in new dues money to UAW, automatically deducted from federal paychecks.

“Some 5,375 early-career NIH researchers have formed a union. The vote to establish the NIH Fellows United-UAW union was certified by the U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority in December. Of the approximately 1,700 NIH fellows who voted, 97.8% voted in favor of the union,” the new union said.

“This is the first union of its kind in the U.S. federal government. The NIH Fellows United-UAW union will cover, to varying degrees, postbaccalaureate, predoctoral, postdoctoral, research, and clinical fellows working at NIH,” it added.

The next month, on January 24, the UAW endorsed Biden.

“This November, we can stand up and elect someone who wants to stand with us and support our cause,” Fain said.

The emergence of the union came at a cost to efforts to reestablish NIH as a science agency trusted by most Americans, following the politicization associated with Anthony Fauci. Union organizers’ rhetoric has been highly political and uniformly leftist. Its social media promotes Bernie Sanders, and all of the bargaining team uses pronouns after their names.

In one public statement, a green-haired “predoctoral fellow” said the purpose of the union was to advance “a commitment to diversity” and to “amplify the unique voices of NIH fellows of all backgrounds” to build “equitable systems.”