A union representing about 5,000 researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a legally binding demand to bargain over Donald Trump’s sweeping policy changes, including a funding freeze, a communications blackout and a staff travel ban.
The NIH is the largest biomedical institution in the world, providing more than $40bn annually to fund health research, providing grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions globally, with nearly 6,000 scientists performing research in its own labs.
The Trump administration’s bid to freeze federal funding triggered confusion inside and outside the research agency.
Although an Office of Management and Budget memo freezing federal funding was rescinded on Wednesday, it remains unclear how research grant funding will be affected, as the White House said a separate executive order by Trump is still in effect.
Marjorie Levinstein, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a union bargaining committee member at the NIH Fellows United-UAW 2750, said Trump’s early actions had “severely limited” researchers’ ability to work, and placed “significant restrictions on free speech” at the the agency.
“We cannot do our research effectively, and this is putting into question delaying research on cancer and diabetes, on drug addiction, on heart disease,” Levinstein told the Guardian. “And this is going to delay medical breakthroughs that the American people deserve.”
The union requested a briefing numerous times from management at the NIH, but were initially ignored, she claimed, before their request was denied.
“We have a right to negotiate over how those changes affect our members, and how they are impacting our members,” Levinstein said in an interview. “And by unilaterally implementing these policy changes, they have taken away our right for that. It’s frustrating that the NIH management is still acting like we are not a union, that we do not have rights. But, you know, if anything it has hardened our resolve to fight for every fellow at the NIH.”
The National Institutes of Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the demand to bargain over changes implemented by the new administration.
The acting director of the NIH, Dr Matthew Memoli, has reportedly attempted to clarify this week that clinical trials at the institute and those its funds, and critical hiring and purchases, can continue. But many questions remain over how current and future research will be affected by Trump’s actions.
The NIH union only secured a contract in December, about a year after the Federal Labor Relations Authority granted its approval to form. Its election win in 2023 amounted to the largest new union of federal employees to form in a decade, and the first at the NIH.
“We were anticipating changes, and that it would be a new relationship we would have to manage but I don’t think anyone expected this firehose,” said Alexander Jordan Lara, a postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and a member of the union’s bargaining committee. “The fact that these are just unilaterally implemented is a violation of our agreement.”
Young career researchers are amidst interviewing for new positions, according to Lara, who said the Trump policy changes have created concerns about the ability for researchers to discuss their research, or to even travel to take these job interviews.
“The communication seems to be kind of contradictory, depending on what institute it’s coming from,,” said Lara. “It’s early career researchers that are doing the actual work; that are doing the life-saving work; that are doing the day-in, day-out, experiments.
“And when our working conditions are adversely impacted, this has significant consequences for the American people. Even short delays in grant funding and delays in people’s careers, impeding their careers, will have shortfalls and really harm the research, and that’s harming the American people.”
The UAW Region 8 director, Tim Smith, said in a statement: “These freezes are already causing research at the NIH to grind to a halt.
“UAW calls on the Trump administration, including acting health and human services secretary Dr Dorothy Fink and Congress, to either bargain with us immediately or to lift these draconian restrictions immediately to ensure that scientific research in the United States, including the crucial work done by UAW members, can continue without interruption.”
