This past Monday, January 23rd, 30 UW students, postdocs, and research staff traveled to Olympia to support funding for research, joined with our peers from WSU & WWU. Six of your fellow UAW members testified at the Senate Higher Education Committee meeting in support of Senate Bill 6321 (with companion bill HB 2739 in the house) – which aims to secure six billion dollars of new funding for researchers based in Washington state. Below are three excerpts from their statements:
“Washington is well positioned — with diverse expertise from batteries to hydrogen, with budding communities like the Seattle Climate Innovation Hub, with talented researchers and entrepreneurs who want to build here, and stay here. We have the chance to set a standard for clean tech that’s both competitive, and responsibly designed. But this all hinges on stable funding. Many of our companies are still nascent, and compounding instabilities are pushing them to relocate or dissolve before they mature — damage that cannot be simply reversed.” – Dr. Rachel Woods-Robinson, senior scientist at the University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute
“When we undermine early-career scientists at the transition to independence, we do not just harm individuals. We weaken the biomedical research workforce. We slow progress on addiction treatment. And we waste taxpayer dollars already spent. Public health crises do not pause for administrative shifts. Scientific careers are long-term investments. If we want solutions to substance use disorder, anxiety, and mental health crises, we must sustain the pipeline of scientists trained to address them.” – Dr. Kasey Girven, Postdoc in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
“Losing funding, even for a few months or a year, has immediate and long-lasting consequences for the forests, communities, and economy of Washington. Fire does not respect political boundaries or discriminate based on income or identity. It does not matter whether we live in urban or rural areas. Continued use of one-size-fits-all approaches to forest and fire management leave us all vulnerable to negative outcomes from increasing fire activity.” – Dr. Jenna Morris, postdoc in Environmental and Forest Sciences at UW
Not only does research funding directly support life-saving and world-preserving research, but more than that, in Washington state, research is an economic driver. Tens of thousands of jobs in our state depend on stable public funding of research, and in a world where federal funding for science and higher education is uncertain, UAW members are at the forefront of building new, localized funding structures to support our work, our jobs, and the benefits by and for our communities.
The bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. Vandana Slatter joined UAW members at a Science Fair held after the hearing, where members from across the spectrum of research shared their work and what is at stake should research funding disappear.
Big ideas take time, and while SB 6321 won’t move forward this legislative session, our efforts have laid the groundwork for support in Olympia to fund research. If you’d like to share your story about the work you do, and the impacts of unstable funding you’ve experienced, please reach out! Members of our union are continuing to build power at UW and across the state over the next year to bring this back in the 2027 legislative session.