How JPL Workers Built Power in 2025!

by | Dec 18, 2025 | Updates

As we approach the end of the year, I wanted to take a moment to share why I am organizing to form a union. I believe that it’s important for us as workers to have more power within the workplace and society to protect our funding, science for the public good, our working conditions, our jobs, and the rights of all workers. Many of us are organizing because we deeply care about the future of JPL and ultimately want to protect and improve the science that we do. Together, we’ve been able to make tremendous progress this year and I wanted to highlight some of our accomplishments: 

  • Organized volunteer groups to assist with cleanup after the Eaton fire through the Pasadena Jobs Center and air filter distribution, along with other UAW locals
  • Delivered a petition with 200+ signatures to the JPL Director calling for a town hall from management to address the future of DEIA, remote work, and Earth Science at JPL
  • Held a panel discussion, “How STEM Workers can Fight Back,” featuring speakers in UAW locals from the NIH, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, MIT, and Caltech
  • Participated in the April 8 National Day of Action as part of the UAW Kill the Cuts campaign to oppose cuts to federal science funding
  • Co-organized a town hall with Judy Chu and George Whitesides at Caltech, along with UAW 2478, to discuss the national importance of the research we do at JPL, and push Congress to oppose federal science funding cuts
  • Conducted trainings, walkthroughs, and thousands of conversations to connect JPLers across lab to launch our authorization card campaign in August with over 200 public supporters
  • Responded to JPL upper management’s misleading union-busting website to ensure that our coworkers can make an informed choice about signing a union authorization card
  • Delivered a letter to the JPL Director calling for transparency into justification for the layoffs of over 500 JPLers, which was addressed at the subsequent town hall
The past year has been full of challenges, and there are more on the horizon, but we know that when JPLers work together, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish. You can reply to this email or fill out the form on our website if you’d like to be a part of building more power for workers at JPL in 2026 so that we can overcome these challenges together.
 

In solidarity,

 

Gary Doran
Data Scientist
341D – Science Data Modeling & Computing