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NIH researchers vote to form a union for the first time

The new bargaining group will represent thousands of early-career scientists at the US National Institutes of Health.
  1. Max Kozlov
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Researchers rally to celebrate the union outside Building 1 of the NIH Bethesda campus.

More than 100 researchers rallied on the NIH’s campus in Bethesda, Maryland, on 1 June to celebrate filing their union petition. Credit: Melissa Lyttle for Nature

Hundreds of early-career researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) have voted overwhelmingly to form a union, nearly completing the official process required to do so. They plan to call on the agency — the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research — to improve pay and working conditions, and to bolster its policies and procedures for dealing with harassment and excessive workloads.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03898-3

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 08 December 2023: This story was updated to include comments from the US National Institutes of Health.

  • Correction 08 December 2023: In an earlier version of this story, it said that the NIH asserted that its research fellows weren’t employees, and therefore ineligible for unionization, in August. It was in late July.

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