May 2021
Volume 1
Issue 8
Read previous issues
Building urgency around our second contract campaign
As of May 18, the Bargaining Committee has met with the University for seven bargaining sessions. Currently, there are four scheduled bargaining sessions before our contract expires on June 30. In addition to our non-economic proposals discussed in last month’s newsletter, we’ve proposed changes to a number of economic articles. The University has yet to respond to these with their initial set of counter proposals.
Pay
Article 20: Compensation proposes pay parity with peer institutions for both salaried and hourly workers, restructures top-up payments, and proposes pay equity for HSPH
Benefits
Article 21: Health & Dental Insurance substantively improves premium coverage for health and dental care, extends access to all student workers, and expands the definition of family to include more kinds of family units
Article 22: Child Care Fund shifts from a reimbursement childcare fund to a yearly subsidy of $8000 per child offered to all students workers with children
Article 23: Family Friendly Benefits extends Care.com access to all student workers and increases the GSAS PhD one-time stipend for new parents
Article 26: Parking & Transit slightly improves access to the bike benefit and offers MBTA passes at no cost to the student worker
Article 28: Emergency Grant allows for unexpended emergency grant funds to roll over to following years
Article 29: Employee Assistance Program extends access to the Employee Assistance Program to all student workers
Article 24: Leave Provisions gives student workers access to paid family and medical leave similar to other workers in the State of Massachusetts and expands the definition of family to include more kinds of family units
On our set of non-economic proposals, we are getting close to agreements with the Harvard administration on a couple. However, we have 20 open articles on the table. At this pace of bargaining, a new contract will not be reached by expiration. The Bargaining Committee is open and willing to schedule additional sessions to try to reach agreements quickly—but only agreements that will substantially improve the working conditions of student workers. The Bargaining Committee is awaiting movement on a number of key issues including real recourse under Article 7: Nondiscrimination, Harassment, and Abuse or Intimidation and Article 8: Academic Retaliation; pay parity under Article 20: Compensation; equal contribution for equal benefit under Article 31: Union Security; and comprehensive mental health and dental care under Article 21: Health and Dental Insurance. To get involved in bargaining and keep pushing Harvard to move on these core issues, RSVP for future bargaining sessions.
Summer organizing with and for your union!
With our contract expiring in 41 days, now is the time to get (more) involved in your union! The contract we win is the contract that you are willing to fight for—and there are so many ways to contribute your skills, expertise, and energy, whatever your bandwidth.
Check out this calendar for all the union events and meetings you can attend this summer, including:
- Monthly General Membership Meetings
- Weekly union strategy meetings
- Open bargaining sessions (May 24, June 8, June 17, June 24)
- Working group and committee meetings, including (alphabetically):
- Basebuilding (organizer training and recruitment)
- Communications Committee (emails, social media, graph design)
- Contract Enforcement and Education Committee (workplace issues, grievance handling)
- Elections Committee (elections of officers, bargaining committee)
- Feminist Working Group (campaign for a grievance procedure against harassment and discrimination, survivor support, coalition building)
- Finance and Benefits Committee (administration of HGSU benefits funds)
- Governance and Participation Committee (organizing for UAW-wide referendum on election of top international officers, HGSU financial audits)
- International Scholars Working Group (immigration, ESL, organizing against ICE)
- Mental Health Working Group (mental health bill of rights)
- Organizing Committee (strategy discussions)
- Racial Justice Working Group (anti-racism, anti-discrimination, coalition work with No Cop Unions, Cops off Campus and Prison Divestment)
- Solidarity Committee (supporting unions and social movements on campus, in the Boston area, and around the country & world)
Hover over each item on the calendar to see meeting details, including the meeting time and who to contact for the link. Recurring meetings are posted, but this calendar will also be updated weekly, so check back often!
Submit your health care (by 5/21) and dental care (by 6/1) expenses for reimbursement!
The deadlines to submit your expenses to our healthcare and dental care benefits funds are rapidly approaching!
Healthcare (deadline: May 21st): This pool of $125,000 is used to reimburse any salaried or stipended student worker who is enrolled in the Student Health Insurance Program (SHIP) through Harvard for specialist visits, prescription drugs, mental health care co-pays, and other out-of-pocket expenses. HGSU’s Finance and Benefits Committee also recently proposed a rules amendment which would allow us to reimburse you for up to 70% of the cost of one pair of glasses or one year of prescription contact lenses. This change still has to be approved by Harvard before it officially goes into effect, but we encourage all eligible student workers to submit your expenses now so that we can process reimbursements as soon as possible after this change is approved.
We encourage ALL eligible student workers to submit your health care expenses for reimbursement here, no matter how small or large they may be.
Dental expenses (deadline: June 1st): We have a separate fund which can reimburse salaried or stipended student workers for dental expenses. Learn more about and submit your expenses to this fund here.
If you have any questions about these funds, you can find detailed information on all of our Benefit Funds, as well as forms to submit expenses at harvardgradunion.org/benefits. If you still have questions, you can reach out to your department steward, or the Financial Secretary, Matt Volpe, at hgsu.finance@gmail.com.
Fall return to campus: guidance from and more questions for the Harvard administration
As the days get warmer and summer begins, we’re learning what in-person teaching and research will look like over the next year. The administration has already announced that in the fall, most undergraduates will return to residence in the houses, and most instruction will take place in person on campus. Vaccinations will be required for students returning to campus. With the recent guidance from the state of Massachusetts, we also expect on-campus labs to further loosen restrictions on access and use this summer, if they haven’t already, though the details will vary according to PI discretion and lab location.
The administration recently provided guidance to department administrators and HGSU stating that those currently residing outside of MA, CA, NY, and New England, but within the United States “will be required to either (1) return to the Harvard campus, (2) change their work location to a state where Harvard is registered for payroll, or (3) shift to a payrolling provider, such as AllSource.” Those residing outside of the US, “must either: (1) delay hire date until they can enter the U.S., (2) take a leave of absence (unpaid or paid if eligible), or (3) hire or extend the individual via a Harvard Affiliate Office Abroad, Local Partner, or Professional Employment Organization.” If you have difficulty setting up your working situation, contact the Contract Education and Enforcement Committee by filling out a workplace issue form or emailing hgsugrievance@protonmail.com. (If you are currently outside the US and intending to get on a third-party payroll, remember that this process has been taking 8-12 weeks or more!)
The Harvard administration has recently clarified the vaccine requirement through HUHS, stating that individuals residing in countries where they may have access to non-WHO authorized vaccines or who do not have access to any vaccines will be provided with US FDA-authorized vaccines upon return to campus. HUHS is currently following CDC guidance that can be found here. Students who are not vaccinated with a US FDA-authorized vaccine will need to quarantine and test upon arrival at campus, and more details about scheduling vaccine appointments will be available in July.
Our union is holding a second Health and Safety Meeting with the University on June 7th, where we can raise your questions and concerns directly with members of the Harvard administration. So, if you have questions or concerns, we want to know! The more of these we can collect, the better we can work together toward a safe and seamless return to campus for all student workers. You can share your questions with us via our COVID safety survey form or by email at hgsugrievance@protonmail.com.
An HGSU Glossary
Have you ever come across a term in an HGSU email that was unfamiliar? Are you interested in becoming a steward but not really sure what that role entails? The work of building collective power, creating a democratic workplace, and negotiating improvements to working conditions for student workers at Harvard involves a number of terms you may not have encountered before. And one of the many roles of your union is to communicate these issues clearly, so each of us can engage fully in our workplace democracy! Among other efforts to make our language and spaces more accessible and welcoming, we’re introducing a new section of the newsletter, an HGSU glossary! This section will provide brief descriptions of terms used in the email or that you may have encountered in other recent HGSU communications.
General terms:
In-unit: If a student worker is “in-unit” they are currently working in a position covered by HGSU’s collective bargaining agreement (contract) with the University—graduate teaching fellows and research assistants and undergraduate course assistants.
Organizing: Everything from casually talking to your friends about their union to inviting your labmates to attend a union meeting and calling graduate students from across the University to ask them to join you on the picket line. Any action that helps to build the power of our union is “organizing.” We organize to win the best contract for all student workers, to enforce our existing contract, and to solve problems student workers face that fall outside the scope of the contract.
HGSU meetings:
Organizing committee (OC): Our weekly, open union meeting. OCs currently take place at 7pm on Mondays on our OC Zoom link (tinyurl.com/hgsuOrg). At OC we make organizing strategy decisions and work together to strengthen our union.
Stewards OC: OC meetings that focus on the needs and roles of stewards within and across departments. Given this focus, this meeting is required for stewards but is also open to all! Stewards OC takes place once a month on Monday at 7pm and replaces the regular OC for that week. Stewards OC generally takes place on the 3rd Monday of the month, although this occasionally changes to accommodate a holiday. You can see when the next Steward’s OC is (usually ~3 weeks ahead of time) on our events calendar: harvardgradunion.org/events-calendar.
General membership meetings (GMM): A monthly meeting of HGSU’s membership to discuss and vote on issues of general interest and importance to HGSU members. All Harvard student workers may attend but only HGSU members may vote. Join your union today at harvardgradunion.org/join.
Labor links
At Harvard and around Boston
- St Vincent Nurses Strike: Since March 8th (now the longest active picket line in the US), 800 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester have been on strike. The nurses, committed to bargaining for the common good, are demanding that owner Tenet Healthcare Corporation put patients over profits and put in place safe staffing levels. HGSU members have been on the picket line in solidarity with nurses from St. Vincent for several of the weekends during their strike. Read more about their strike in these articles in Working Mass, the Boston DSA Labor Blog. The Hospital recently announced it intends to hire permanent replacements for striking nurses.
- Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) Nurses & Healthcare Professionals March: On May 8th, CHA nurses and healthcare professionals represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association marched to Cambridge Hospital to call attention to how CHA executives are refusing to bargain in good faith over needed improvements to staff, pay, and benefits. The Cambridge City Council voted 9-0 to stand in solidarity with MNA nurses in their campaign for a fair contract.
Around the country
- Student worker strike and tentative agreement at NYU: After being on strike since April 26, the GSOC-UAW Bargaining Committee announced they had reached a tentative agreement. Student workers will now vote on whether to ratify this tentative agreement.
- Tentative agreement at University of Washington: Building on a series of powerful collective actions, UAW Local 4121 ASE Bargaining Committee announced they had reached a tentative agreement on May 18. Student workers will now vote on whether to ratify this tentative agreement.
- Rutgers University AAUP-AFT organizing for contract: Rutgers Postdoctoral Associates Union AAUP-AFT is organizing for a contract renewal, and are asking for support by signing their petition.
- RAs organizing at the UCs: Currently, UAW Local 2865 only represents Teaching Assistants, Tutors, and Readers across the University of California campuses. Now 17,000 Student Researchers are organizing to join and win recognition as well. If they win, the total number of union members in the US would increase by 0.1%.
- UAW ex-President sentenced & UAW-wide referendum on democratic elections: On May 11, UAW ex-President Dennis Williams was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for his role in years of corruption at the highest levels of UAW, in which officials and auto executives broke labor laws, stole union funds, and exchanged cash for contract concessions. Meanwhile, a federal judge approved the independent auditor who will oversee the UAW-wide referendum this fall on the election of top UAW international officers. HGSU membership has endorsed and is organizing in support of One Member, One Vote.
- Nurses at Maine Medical Center win NLRB election: In the biggest NLRB election since 2018, on April 29, the NLRB certified results that nurses at the Maine Medical Center voted to form a union (1,001-750).
Around the world
- Palestinian general strike: On May 18, Palestinians launched a general strike across the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Israel to demand an end to occupation, illegal settlement, and violence.
- Strikes in Colombia: Colombia is now in its third week of national strikes that began on April 28 in protest against regressive tax reform and have since grown in size, geographical spread, and diversity of demands, unified by a common front against Colombia’s right-wing administration.
- Strikes in Myanmar: Workers in Myanmar have continued to strike in protest of a military coup over 100 days ago, despite an increasingly deadly government crackdown.
