My name is Lee Kennedy-Shaffer and I’m in biostatitics. As the bargaining team prepared for mediation, we were empowered by our fall 2019 strike and excited to enter a new stage for our struggle. Tuesday was the first full day of mediation with a federal mediator, Martin Callaghan from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services. …
My name is Lee Kennedy-Shaffer—I marched with striking student workers from University Hall to 114 Mt. Auburn Street to facilitate a bargaining session for the first time since our strike began. The administration’s bargaining committee had to walk through a tunnel of student workers to enter the building. Yesterday the administration demonstrated more willingness to …
Now is the time to join us on the picket lines tomorrow and all week! As of the end of our bargaining session today, it is clear we must proceed as planned with our strike scheduled to commence tomorrow morning. We worked hard in recent days to formulate modifications to a number of our …
My name is Cole Meisenhelder, and I am a G4 in Physics and facilitated yesterday’s bargaining session. This was our last scheduled session before our strike deadline. We reached no new tentative agreements and the administration showed no effort to resolve our key disagreements. We will be bargaining again for 2.5 hours on Monday, December …
My name is Lee Kennedy-Shaffer, and I am a 4th year PhD student in Biostatistics at the School of Public Health. I facilitated our first bargaining session after announcing our strike deadline. We went in—once again—with the goal of winning a contract with fair pay, affordable health care, and protections against discrimination and harassment. This …
Bargaining Update #25: Bargaining Update for Nov 15 Read More »
My name is Cory McCartan, and I’m a first-year in Statistics. I facilitated today’s bargaining session with the administration—our first since over 2,700 members voted to authorize a strike by a 9 to 1 margin. Eighteen months after we formed our union, the university administration is still refusing to agree to fair pay, paid family leave, comprehensive …
Bargaining Update #24. Bargaining update for Oct 30 Read More »
My name is Jenni Austiff, and I’m a 4th year in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; I facilitated today’s bargaining session with the university administration. Since our last bargaining meeting, we have launched our strike authorization vote (SAV) and we have been very excited to see so many student workers cast their ballots within the first …
Bargaining Update #23. Bargaining update for Oct 17 Read More »
Today’s bargaining session was canceled by Harvard.
My name is Rachel Sandalow-Ash, and I’m a third-year student and research assistant at HLS. On Friday, I facilitated the second bargaining session of the semester. We passed our counter-proposal on Compensation back to the university administration; and we received a counter-proposal from administration on Workspace and Materials. We want a contract that keeps up with the cost …
Bargaining Update #22. Bargaining update for Sept 20 Read More »
My name is Justin Bloesch, and yesterday morning, I facilitated our first bargaining session of the new semester and our shortest (2 hour) session so far. We signed a Tentative Agreement on Travel—a significant win—ensuring that student workers expenses are paid upfront for most work-related travel, rather than needing to wait weeks or months for …
Bargaining Update #21. Bargaining update for Sept 9 Read More »
