Unions Like UAW Must Shift Their Focus to Defend America’s Scientific Future
It is no secret that America’s leadership in science and technology was not born by accident—it was built through public investment, public partnerships with academia, and government sanction of private sector monopoly. From the Apollo program to the Human Genome Project, from the internet to the transistor, the United States once treated research and development (R&D) as a cornerstone of national security and economic strength. For some time the facade has been quietly crumbling away, but last week’s FY2026 Discretionary Budget Request rocked the foundations of that legacy hard enough to bring down its edifice.
We were already in the midst of a slow-moving crisis in federal science funding—one that has gone largely unaddressed for decades. Recent developments have thrown this trend into sharp relief. The Trump administration’s FY2026 budget proposal calls for massive cuts to nearly every federal agency that supports basic and applied research: a 55% cut to the National Science Foundation, nearly 50% slashed from NASA’s science programs, and a 24% reduction to NOAA, among others (Table 1). The NSF has already frozen new grants and proposed caps on indirect cost rates. NIH and DOE have moved to cap these indirect costs—critical for the shared infrastructure that makes research possible. Entire research programs are being halted mid-stream. This is happening where it has not been temporarily restrained by injunctive relief in the courts. As the AAU put it in their recent filing, if allowed to stand, the cap will “badly undermine scientific research at America’s universities and erode our Nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”
Table 1. Proposed FY2026 budget cuts to major U.S. science agencies comparing enacted FY2025 funding levels with the President’s FY2026 Budget Request. Bottom-line figures showing sharp proposed reductions for key research institutions. Data compiled from OMB and appropriations documentation based on enacted appropriations legislation and continuing resolutions.
| Agency/Program | FY2025 Enacted ($M) | FY2026 Proposed ($M) | % Change |
| Department of Energy (DOE) | 49,800 | 45,100 | -9% |
| DOE Office of Science | 8,240 | 7,092 | -14% |
| Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | 9,100 | 5,000 | -45% |
| National Aeronautics and Space Admin. (NASA) | 24,800 | 18,800 | -24% |
| NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) | 7,565.70 | 3,908.2 | -48% |
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. | 6,319 | 4,799 | -24% |
| National Science Foundation (NSF) | 8,800 | 3,900 | -56% |
| U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) | 1,455.43 | 891.43 | -39% |
| National Institutes of Health (NIH) | 48,500 | 30,535 | -37% |
These are not just statistics. They are salaries lost, experiments canceled, graduates and postdocs terminated, and futures foreclosed.
Yet in this moment of existential threat to science, national labor institutions like the United Auto Workers (UAW), who represent a growing constituency of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, must respond with far greater urgency and clarity. Some actions are already underway—UAW is a party in litigation challenging NIH’s funding cuts, national lobbying is reportedly occurring, and Region 6 locals have participated in protest actions like the Kill the Cuts rallies. (Our local chapter has taken part in these initial efforts, including participation in Kill the Cuts actions and coordination with the UAW Higher Ed Council.) These are good first steps. But, given the scale and speed of the threat, UAW national leadership must do more to coordinate, expand, and amplify these efforts across its entire academic membership.
Allow me to make the case: graduate workers now make up a rapidly growing share of UAW’s membership. As of early 2024, approximately 38% of graduate student employees in the United States are represented by unions (an increase of 133% in union representation since 2012). UAW’s success in organizing student workers at institutions like Columbia, Harvard, University of California, and Caltech has transformed the union. These student researchers are the ones filling labs, winning grants, and producing the science that drives innovation and economic growth. This accounts for ~26% of UAW’s total membership coming from academia, making it one of the largest and fastest-growing sectoral constituencies. They now increasingly fill UAW’s membership rolls and its coffers.
So where are our national heralds of labor? UAW’s national leadership has increasingly aligned itself with President Trump on issues like tariffs and trade policy, showing that taking political stances (even economically illiterate ones) on behalf of its membership is possible. Meanwhile, UAW national’s public response to the administration’s full-frontal assault on America’s research enterprise has remained limited in scope and visibility. While some interventions (e.g. the NIH lawsuit) have occurred, for the national union this characterization is broadly true. To me, that is an untenable contradiction. You cannot claim to represent current academic researchers and the future of American labor while watching the backbone of that future wither and die.
It is time for UAW’s national leadership and other major labor organizations to reorient their policy advocacy. They must stop treating science funding as someone else’s issue. It is their issue now.
This is not a new problem, so it is one I would have hoped UAW might have seen earlier. Since the late Cold War, public R&D spending has steadily declined as a percentage of GDP and of the federal budget. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), federal R&D spending as a share of the economy has dropped from nearly 2% of GDP in the 1960s to under 0.7% today. In real terms, many grants that once supported entire labs now struggle to fund a single graduate student at fully burdened costing. This hollowing out of American science has been occurring for decades, but today’s policies accelerate that decline precipitously, toward a dangerous new low.
There is a hopeful counterpoint: the organizing of academic workers has never been stronger. As I mentioned a moment ago, academia accounts for one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors in the labor movement; tens of thousands of graduate students and postdocs are unionized. If unions like UAW embrace their new scientific base, rather than longfully yearning for the bygone era of factory work, then they have the numbers—and the moral authority—to be a powerful voice in federal policy debates about research, education, and innovation.
That means taking action. I would like to see UAW and our local chapter CGPU (UAW-2478) coordinating with Caltech and other academic institutions on this common cause to lobby Congress to restore and expand research budgets. I would like to see them expand their filing amicus briefs or joining lawsuits challenging unlawful or punitive policy changes like overhead caps. I would like to see them organizing national coalitions of grad student/postdoc unions across disciplines and institutions. I would like to see them sending representatives to Washington, D.C., to speak directly with lawmakers to highlight the importance of these programs, the nature and function of indirect costs, and (I cannot believe I have to say this so explicitly) the relevance of R&D to our modern economy. Efforts like Caltech’s legal challenges to the NIH, DoE, and NSF indirect cost caps should not be led by academic administrations alone; organized labor must stand alongside them to a much greater degree.
**These are not extraordinary measures. They are long overdue. **In sum, these are the bare minimum actions we should expect from UAW’s national leadership. The union has collected dues from graduate members at other universities for long enough to do more than pay lip service to the needs of the moment (I would point national leadership in the direction of UAW Region 6 to see what stronger communication on this issue could look like). Now that Shawn Fain and his cadre represent Caltech grads on the national scale, I want them to put our money where their mouth is.
In the interests of fairness, I do feel I need to highlight my own views on indirect costs specifically. In my opinion, it often goes without saying that not every dollar of indirect cost reimbursement has been spent wisely—many institutions, including Stanford, now employ more staff than they enroll students, and some administrative growth has rightly been criticized as bureaucratic bloat. I’m sure we have elements of waste in our own institution too; I’ve certainly seen some of that in student affairs during my time with GSC. But to respond with a battleaxe where a scalpel is needed is to risk turning the body of research into its corpse. The solution to inefficiencies in economically indispensable programs is calculated and careful reform, not ruin. Broad-brush caps on indirect costs don’t distinguish between essential infrastructure (e.g. shared core facilities, building upkeep, EH&S offices, grant administration, research compliance) and excessive administrative bloat. By gutting indirect cost recovery wholesale, we don’t just trim fat—we sever arteries.
Even hard-won victories can be vulnerable. At Caltech, our newly ratified collective bargaining agreement with the Institute includes meaningful wage increases and legal protections—most notably, Article 4, which guarantees that Caltech must supplement externally funded stipends or salaries if they fall below contractual minimums. But even this safeguard has limits. If a federal agency were to impose binding restrictions prohibiting such top-ups, Article 28 appears to give clear deference to the funder/grantor’s terms, taking precedence over our bargained contract. Meanwhile, Article 6 allows Caltech to terminate appointments due to the loss of funding for reasons beyond its control, and Article 20 reserves to the Institute broad discretion over its budgets and grant administration (viz. if a drastic budget cut forces a reduction in funded positions or necessitates reallocation of resources, the Institute may have the discretion to act accordingly). Taken together, these clauses don’t erase our gains—but they do provide evidence for how fragile those gains could become in the face of deepening federal science cuts. And if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is further weakened, politicized, or dismantled, even the limited recourse we currently have could vanish. Without funding, and without enforcement, a contract cannot protect us.
The story of America’s scientific preeminence is, in large part, a story of its willingness to invest in the potential for future returns on investment. That is, to see research for the public good. It is clear to me now that willingness is faltering. And unless those who depend on that funding—students, postdocs, universities, industries, and now unions—fight for it together, the story may be nearing its end.
Take heed, Shawn Fain: if the national UAW wants to be the union of the future workforce, it must fight for the future. That means fighting for science today.
Author’s Note: I am a member of the Caltech Graduate Postdoctoral Union (CGPU-UAW Local 2478). The views expressed here are my own and do not represent our union, the Graduate Student Council, or the Institute.