Newsletter: April 2021

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Here’s what you’ve missed in bargaining:

Since March, the HGSU Bargaining Committee has met with the University four times for bargaining sessions. These sessions have been surprisingly productive with the University expressing interest in swift negotiations. After presenting our bargaining goals approved in March, we negotiated bargaining rules which allow any HGSU student worker to openly observe sessions. We’ve also proposed changes to several bundles of non-economic articles in our contract.

Appointment Issues

• Article 3: Employment Appointment Letter, strengthens timing of appointment letter distribution and notice of union rights/benefits
• Article 4: Employment Appointment Security, improves pay and employment security for TFs and RAs
• Article 11: Training, establishes a collaborative relationship between our Union and the the University to tackle racial justice and ability-based harassment
• Article 15: Workspace & Materials, protects remote work arrangements and procedures for acquiring remote workspace materials post-pandemic 

Harassment & Discrimination

• Article 7: Nondiscrimination, Harassment, and Abuse or Intimidation, reenvisions SW protections against harassment and discrimination by expanding on protected groups and providing the option of third-party grievance and neutral arbitration
• Article 8: Academic Retaliation, asserts that academic retaliation should be subject to a third-party grievance procedure and neutral arbitration
• Article 9: Intellectual Property, Scholarly & Research Misconduct, asserts that intellectual property disputes should be subject to third-party grievance procedure and neutral arbitration
• Article 11: International Student Worker Rights & Work Authorization, aims to provide international SWs with free immigration legal aid and protections against retaliation related to immigration status

Health & Safety

• Article 10: Healthy & Safety, extends health and safety to the remote workspace and incorporates resources and access to unarmed responders for SWs in crises

Union Access

• Article 18: Union Access & Rights, improves union access to SW orientations and information
• Article 31: Union Security, establishes a union shop to ensure a long-lasting union and enforceable contract 

The University has sent counter-proposals for Articles 3, 5 (Job postings), 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, and 18, while our bargaining team has responded to the University counter to Article 15. Moving forward, we will be working on more counter-proposals in response to the University. Additionally, we will begin presenting economic articles detailing improvements to our unit’s compensation and benefits. And if you are interested, we love having union observers in the room! Observers lend credibility and strength to our cause, and you get to see firsthand how the University responds to reasonable solutions to real issues. You can RSVP for future sessions here.

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Our membership votes to endorse One Member, One Vote in the upcoming UAW referendum

Andrew Bergman

At this month’s General Membership Meeting, our membership voted to approve a resolution in support of One Member, One Vote (1M1V), or direct elections of UAW International Executive Board (IEB) officers, in the UAW-wide referendum that will take place this fall. The referendum presents a rare opportunity for UAW members to begin to build a more democratic UAW.

At the end of last year, the UAW reached an agreement with the Department of Justice, after a massive corruption scandal, including embezzlement and bribery charges, that led to the conviction of 15 top UAW officials, including two former presidents. As part of the agreement, a court-appointed monitor is tasked with overseeing a referendum among all UAW members to decide if the UAW will switch to a system of directly electing the 13-member International Executive Board.

In the UAW’s current system, delegates are elected from each Local to a constitutional convention, which takes place every four years. The “Administration Caucus” controls what has for decades been a one-party system emerging from these convention elections, using the promise of staff jobs or support in Local elections to create a patronage system to win over delegates. Since 1986, only one opposition candidate has been successful in challenging and winning a seat on the IEB—the rest have been won by Administration Caucus candidates, usually running unopposed.

Instead of being able to win by doing favors for a small group, 1M1V would require candidates for IEB positions to actively campaign to win our votes as UAW members and tell us how they plan to represent our interests. Rank-and-file UAW members would be empowered through this process to demand a bold, progressive agenda from leaders, including key demands listed in our resolution like redoubling efforts to organize the unorganized and realizing social justice unionism. Higher ed workers now make up almost 20% of the UAW’s roughly 400,000 members, yet there has never been a higher ed worker on the IEB. Working with other academic workers across the country, including those who have also endorsed 1M1V at the University of Washington and across the University of California, we can organize to win democratic power and influence within the UAW.

Throughout HGSU’s organizing efforts, our members have asked questions about why they should support and join the UAW, given its history of corruption. This is our chance to show that we will work in solidarity with other rank-and-file UAW members in support of accountability and union democracy, even as we acknowledge and appreciate the incredible support and resources the UAW has provided our organizing efforts.

Our resolution tasks our Governance and Participation Committee to organize for 1M1V within HGSU, and you can fill out this interest form or reach out to the GPC co-chairs at hgsu.trustees@gmail.com if you want to get involved. You can also pledge to vote for 1M1V and donate to the 1M1V campaign being organized across the UAW.
For a comprehensive overview of the referendum on direct elections, the campaign to organize for 1M1V, and the possible outcomes for the UAW, read “Opening the Door to a More Democratic UAW” in Labor Notes.

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Significant labor legislation debated in Congress

HGSU Solidarity Committee

If passed by Congress, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would be the most significant piece of labor legislation since the New Deal. It is supported by many national unions and labor federations, including the UAW and the AFL-CIO. The PRO Act would introduce meaningful penalties to employers who violate labor law, override so-called “Right-to-Work” laws, strengthen workers’ abilities to engage in collective action, and put workers and employers on an even playing field during union elections.

We know from our first union election that employers don’t always play fair during union elections. In 2016, Harvard excluded many student workers from their list of eligible workers who should have been included. After we won the ability to hold a new election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), we also won our union through a majority vote. Under the PRO Act, employers who violate labor law would be held accountable and face real penalties for doing so.

Did you know that employers are legally allowed to require workers to attend anti-union meetings? The PRO Act would ban these “captive audience” meetings. Like most other workers who attempt to form a union in the U.S., Amazon workers at Bessemer were required to attend such meetings as a condition of employment. Although it’s hard to know exactly why the Amazon workers voted against forming a union, lLabor law’s current acceptance of captive audience meetings like these and other unfair practices deny workers a fighting chance in forming a union. Organizing a union should be a right, not a fight.

The House has already passed the PRO Act now for the second time, but it has yet to be taken up by the Senate. Especially for workers who vote out of state, and who’s senators might not yet support the PRO Act, it’s important to make sure you let your elected representatives know where you stand on this critical pro-worker legislation. You can call your Senators here.

To pass the PRO Act, the Senate will need to scrap the filibuster. For more on the connection between the two, and why ending the filibuster should be one of organizer labor’s top priorities, see Bargaining Committee member Ash Tomaszewski’s OnLabor article.

You can read a detailed breakdown of the PRO Act here.

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Harvard agrees to pay HGSU $60,000 and other contract enforcement updates

We want to share an important new CEEC resource for your organizing: a new workplace grievance reports webpage, which will be updated monthly with a new edition of the grievance report! You can find previous monthly grievance reports to see what workplace issues your union is working to address. This page also includes anonymized grievance wins and testimonials to share with fellow workers.

A recent major update you won’t want to miss:   

We’ve reached a settlement with the Harvard administration over missed dues deductions from July to September 2020. The administration has agreed to pay your union $60,000 for the missing dues, and these dues will not be retroactively collected from student worker paychecks!

We originally filed this grievance in September 2020, filed for arbitration in November and we’re pleased that this process has finally reached a conclusion. This is a huge indication that our grievance process, which can culminate in neutral, third-party arbitration, helps us solve workplace issues. As part of the settlement, we’ve agreed to a joint statement with the administration, which you can read here. 

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Labor Links

At Harvard and Around Boston

• St Vincent Nurses Strike: Since March 8th, 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 with nurses from St. Vincent for several of the weekends during their strike, and one member (Andrew Bergman) will be contributing to a series in Working Mass next week featuring nurses’ stories about what drove them to strike and the solidarity they’ve built up on the picket line. Here’s a sneak peak from Andrew’s conversation with Marlena Pellegrino, who has been a nurse at St. Vincent’s for 34 years:

Across the Country

• Student-worker strike at Columbia: After the GWC-UAW bargaining committee “paused” their strike in early April, it announced a tentative agreement on Monday, April 19. The membership vote on whether to ratify the agreement began on Wednesday and will run through Friday, April 30.
• NLRB vote at Amazon: Earlier in April, the NLRB tallied the votes for the union representation election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL: 1798 no’s to 738 yeses. The results came after a no-holds-barred campaign of disinformation, intimidation, and demobilization from Amazon, and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has filed objections in the hopes that the NLRB will order a new election. (It’s not unthinkable: after the Harvard administration disenfranchised hundreds of workers in our first union election for student-workers at Harvard, the NLRB ordered a new one for us.) There are any number of takes on why the union failed to prevail here, from criticisms of their organizing strategy to a focus on labor law reform to make it easier to form unions. One RWDSU organizer acknowledged the loss but remained optimistic about their prospects for victory in the long term. And some observers hope that the campaign at Bessemer will fuel a global labor uprising at Amazon.
• RAs organizing at the UCs: Currently, UAW Local 2865 only represents Teaching Assistants, Tutors, and Readers across the University of California campuses. Now Student Researchers are organizing to join and win recognition as well.
• Tech Workers at the NYT: 650 New York Times tech workers are organizing to join the NewsGuild of New York, which already represents over 1300 newsroom and business staff workers at the Times and other outlets.
• Coal strike: 1100 United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) coal miners in Tuscaloosa County, AL, remain on strike for higher wages after rejecting a tentative agreement. This is the largest and longest miners strike in the United States since 1993. Meanwhile, UMWA President Cecil Roberts said his union would support a transition from coal to renewable energy as long as it came with good new jobs for former coal miners.

Around the World

• Strikes in Myanmar: Workers in Myanmar have continued to strike in protest of a military coup, despite an increasingly deadly government crackdown.
• Farmers Protest India: The farmers protest against deregulation, consolidation, and proletarianization in India’s agriculture sector also rolls on despite government intransigence and repression.
• Coupang: Amazon isn’t the only company that ruthlessly surveils and overworks its employees: South Korea’s Coupang, another e-commerce company, has similar labor practices. The Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union and an independent Riders’ Union are running a nascent campaign to unionize Coupang Eats’ over 200,000 food delivery drivers.