Our names are Cory McCartan and Maya Anjur-Dietrich, and we are members of your Bargaining Committee from the SEAS & Cambridge Sciences division!
Today, we met with the university bargaining team for our seventh bargaining session.
At this point, we have four sessions left before our current contract expires. The university has yet to move on any of the core issues important to us: access to neutral arbitration in cases of harassment, discrimination, bullying, and retaliation; fair compensation that reflects our cost of living; improved health care access; and a union shop where everyone contributes to our shared protections and benefits.
To give you an idea of what this looks like:
- We’ve put forward 33 proposals and counter-proposals.
- The administration has put forward only 13, the majority of which were near-wholesale rejections of all of our proposed changes.
- The administration hasn’t responded at all to our proposals on 11 articles, including compensation and health care.
Today, we communicated our willingness to meet more often so that we can reach agreement on a new contract by June 30. Unfortunately, the administration has not yet been willing to meet our bargaining pace. Instead of using our sessions to discuss core issues and major proposals, their counterproposals overwhelmingly deal with smaller articles and issues.
Today the university presented three counterproposals, in areas we’ve made good progress and are only disagreeing on small sections. For Article 3 (Appointment Letters), we won the inclusion of RA duty descriptions, and we’re continuing to ask that appointment letters include mention of remote work and hours estimates, ensuring that student workers have enforceable protections around these issues. For Article 9 (Intellectual Property), the university rejected our proposal to have disputes brought to arbitration if school policies are insufficient, but also continues to lack clarity on what student workers should do if there is not school policy (as is the case for most schools). Finally, for Article 15 (Workspace and Materials), we continued our discussion about minimum notice required to terminate remote work.
We also presented two counters, reasserting our proposal for more protections for student workers in situations of abusive and toxic work environments (Article 4, Appointment Security) and workplaces that endanger their health and safety (Article 10, Health and Safety).
Our contract fight doesn’t take place in isolation; world events continue to deeply impact student workers and our communities. Today, Palestinians are striking across the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Israel to demand an end to occupation, illegal settlement, and violence. Ongoing state repression and disease continues to claim lives in Colombia and India.
As a union, we believe that the U.S. labor movement should adopt a stance of internationalist support with oppressed workers around the globe. Our fate as organized workers depends on solidarity across borders and across workplaces. An internationalist commitment necessarily includes solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom.
We support calls for Harvard’s divestment from companies involved in illegal settlement. To that end, our union’s Executive Board signed on to this Statement by Palestine Student Groups at Harvard University on Violence Against Palestinians. And over the next few weeks HGSU will hold educational events about the role of labor in supporting international causes (details TBA). Let us know if you’d like to get involved or learn more by replying to this email.
In the meantime, our work towards a stronger second contract continues. The contract we’ll end up with depends on much more than what happens at the bargaining table. We need you to talk to your coworkers about joining the union to build our membership power, get involved in the union; and come to open bargaining sessions (and bring your friends!). We’ve seen great engagement from workers across the university this last month, and we’re excited to continue fighting for a great contract alongside all of you.
In solidarity,
Cory and Maya
