Our names are Ash and Koby, your non-binary bargaining tag-team, and we are members of your Bargaining Committee!
On an early Monday morning, we had our fourth bargaining session with Harvard’s team and over 30 Union observers.
Briefly, here’s what we covered during our meeting:
Article 8: Retaliation
To work toward a more just workplace for SWs, we proposed protections against academic retaliation. The Union recognizes that folks may fear academic setbacks via withholding of academic opportunities or recommendation letters, or through academic assessments if they report cases of harassment or discrimination. The University agreed that retaliation is a real concern at Harvard, and that also the fear of retaliation might stop SWs from reporting misconduct. However, they stopped short of agreeing to policies that would help fix those issues, namely, access to grievance and neutral, third-party arbitration. The University doesn’t see it as a conflict of interest to exclusively handle retaliation complaints despite having dozens of famously egregious examples of Harvard protecting abusers for decades.
Article 10: Health and Safety
We presented our proposals which included:
- Common-sense expansions to racial justice and mental health safety protections including access to unarmed responders during crises
- Crisis resources
- The development of a mental health bill of rights in collaboration with the University to help prevent crises in the first place
Unfortunately, the University rejected nearly every one of our proposals in this article wholesale, commenting that the University was writing a report that might be actionable in some undefined amount of time (read: years). In fact, most of what the University argued was meant to disable any legitimate means of enforcement. Events over the last couple of years indicate that relying exclusively on armed campus police might be a dangerous or particularly traumatic policy for SWs and SWs of color. We wondered how one could rationalize this complete rejection of common-sense, trauma-informed, race-conscious policy. We’re sure the University will tell us—maybe in another report of no actionable consequence.
Article 11: Training
Our proposal for the training article seeks to create a collaborative relationship between the Union and University to combat racism on campus. We suggested that the two groups work jointly to develop an annual training addressing anti-racism, anti-bias, and anti-discrimination led primarily by subject experts. Additionally, we proposed an online training module to address ability-based harassment.
Article 13: International Student Worker Protections
In light of international student struggles this past year, the Union sought to strengthen protections while providing international SWs ample opportunity to address visa-related concerns. Our proposal covers the following:
- Establishes free legal advisors for international SWs with immigration or visa concerns
- Expands the release time clause to give international SWs more flexibility in solving immigration issues
- Protects international SWs from retaliation in all forms related to their immigration status
Our next sessions are April 26, 2:00 – 5:00pm and May 6, 2:00 – 5:00pm. Bargaining sessions are hype and remind us of the feeling of theatre tech weeks if they weren’t also so serious and important. Just like during tech week, the show only goes on if we all show up and deal with the unexpected craziness together. Ultimately, we can’t achieve anything at the table without the power and support of members. For a front seat, RSVP for future bargaining sessions here, and if you haven’t, join your union today.
In solidarity,
Ash and Koby
