Greetings from the Harvard Grad Student Union bargaining committee! We have a brief update about ongoing preparations and next steps in our campaign to bargain the first contract for student workers at Harvard University:
1500 Bargaining Surveys and Growing!
More than 1500 student workers from across Harvard have now filled out our bargaining survey. We are encouraged by this outpouring of useful feedback and strongly encourage all others to take a few minutes and fill out the bargaining survey as soon as possible. The information and feedback will enable us to craft responsive and inclusive initial bargaining goals and to engage in effective negotiations with Harvard on behalf of all student workers.
What’s next? Voting on bargaining our goals!
We will announce a specific date soon, but we expect to launch the ratification vote of our initial bargaining goals in early September, when most student workers have returned to campus. The bargaining committee has been working diligently to draw from survey feedback and best practices from other union contracts to develop a comprehensive list of initial bargaining goals. We intend to hold informational sessions and office hours in order to best respond to questions people may have prior to voting on the bargaining goals. We strongly encourage you to vote. The more student workers who support our initial goals, the stronger our union will be in negotiations with Harvard.
Meeting with Harvard
Once we complete ratification of our initial bargaining goals, we intend to bargain as frequently as possible with the administration in order to win a fair contract in a timely manner. Over the summer, we have had a couple preliminary meetings with administration officials. In one meeting we discussed our initial request for information — as a certified union, we are entitled to request relevant information about student worker conditions that will help us engage more effectively in the bargaining process, and Harvard must make a good-faith effort to provide that information. We also had a meeting initiating conversations with administrators who oversee Harvard’s student health insurance plan in order to start to generate as much mutual understanding as possible about the strengths and weaknesses of how the plan works currently. We have had mostly constructive discussions so far, but have experienced some challenges getting Harvard to schedule meeting time.
While some of these challenges have to do with travel schedules over the summer, it is very clear to us already that we will need as much support as possible behind our bargaining campaign in order to hold Harvard accountable to a reasonable timeline for reaching agreement on a fair contract.
