Bargaining Committee
Maya Anjur-Dietrich
Applied Physics
I am a sixth-year PhD candidate in Applied Physics, and I currently serve on the Executive Board as the Sergeant at Arms. I also serve as co-chair of the Contract Enforcement and Education Committee, and by helping student workers fight for their rights, I have seen that many of us are facing similar challenges in the workplace, especially with the current pandemic and economic uncertainty. With our contract, student workers across the University have been able to assert their rights to ensure pay raises, correct unmanageable workloads, and demand access to COVID testing. However, it is also clear that we need to fight for improvements in our next contract, such as the right to grieve identity- and power-based harassment and discrimination, pay equity across all schools—notably lacking in the School of Public Health—and increased healthcare protections. I would like to serve on the Bargaining Committee to negotiate a contract that improves the lives of workers and advocates for a more just university. I believe that we have the power to demand lasting changes at this university, and I am committed to fighting for a contract that empowers every worker, especially those whose voices often go unheard by the administration.
Shani Cohen
Economics
I am a G2 in the Economics Department. I’m running for the Bargaining Committee to fight to enforce the protections we won in our first contract and to make our union even stronger in the long term.
Before moving to the US, I was part of the union leadership in Tel Aviv University, which was a decades old organisation. I think this gave me a unique viewpoint of how unions can function in the long term, an experience I’d like to use in the process of building infrastructure to sustain the union into the future and build strong connections between the bargaining team, the executive board and the members of the union.
Coming from a country with labor laws that far better protect workers’ rights, I found it astonishing how much our union has been able to achieve given the unfair field on which we have been forced to play. I believe that one of the most important roles that our union has fulfilled, and should continue to do so, is to shift the balance of power in the university to the student workers’ side. In that, I find discrimination and harrasment protections to be an incredibly important struggle that we should keep fighting hard for toward the next contract. In addition, I think it is extremely important to make sure to include protections we’ve gained during the pandemic in the next contract, and to enhance the critical benefits we won in health insurance, dental insurance, and childcare.
Jack Cordes
Population Health Sciences
I am a second-year PhD student in Population Health Sciences. I work as a teaching assistant in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) as well as a teaching fellow in Population Health Science in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).
I have been organizing with HGSU since 2019 and I strongly believe in the union’s mission to protect student workers at Harvard University. I am ready to advocate for pay equity, harassment and discrimination protections, adequate healthcare, and a closed union shop for Harvard student workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the important and critical work of public health knowledge-generators front and center as well as put a spotlight on the conditions of student workers within HSPH and across the University. It is time the University acknowledges and supports the vital work of public health student workers instead of ignoring them and designating them as less valuable than their peers at other Harvard schools. It is time we had a fair contract to protect all student workers at Harvard.
Victoria Dzindzichashvili
Harvard Kennedy School
I am happy to accept a nomination to the bargaining committee. This work is deeply personal to me: before HKS, I worked in higher education for 7 years, including 4 years at Harvard. I am a lifelong Boston resident who regularly witnesses the effects of how Harvard treats its staff, and how that feeds into displacement and public health disparities. Harvard is the richest university in the world, and it needs to share that wealth with all of its workers.
I first joined a union in 2012, joining the Massachusetts Teachers Association while working at UMass Boston. In that role, I fought to be paid fairly for the work I was doing, which went far beyond what I was hired to do. The university argued that I did not deserve additional compensation, but after months of negotiations, I secured a retroactive raise.
I joined HBS in 2015 as a member of Harvard’s administrative staff union. I moved to a non-union role at HMS in 2016, managing 5 employees who supported the Systems Biology faculty. As a manager interfacing with the school’s HR department, I advocated for my team the same way I had previously advocated for myself. I fought on multiple occasions to ensure that they were paid fairly, and that new hires were offered equitable salaries.
I am excited for the opportunity to help Harvard’s students build power toward a more just and equitable workplace, and would be honored to serve on the committee.
Aparna Gopalan
Anthropology
I am a G4 Ph.D. Candidate in the Anthropology department at Harvard. My intersecting identities and experiences as a student-worker have together brought me to become a HGSU organizer. As a researcher of economic inequality, I’ve studied in dismay the decline of worker power over the past fifty years. As a worker myself, I’ve felt the bite of that reality in the growing gap between my own earnings and costs of living. As a visa-holder, I’ve known first-hand the additional socioeconomic precarity stemming from hardening international borders. And as a woman of color, I’ve witnessed both everyday and egregious instances of sexism & racism in the academic workplace. All of these are difficulties, but with a graduate worker union at Harvard we now have ways to turn all of these difficulties into opportunities: opportunities for finding community, building trust, and organizing to build student-worker power. That’s what the HGSU has been for me.
Before I came to the HGSU, I organized against racism & harassment on my undergraduate campus, taught open-to-public courses on debt justice & public goods in Cambridge, and devoted myself more broadly to democratizing knowledge-production in the service of socioeconomic justice. As a union member, I’ve worked with the International Scholars Working Group and served as a grievance officer. As an Executive Board member, I’ve continued organizing across departments with the Base Building Team and the Racial Justice Working Group. Serving on the Bargaining Committee will be an opportunity to exercise the worker power built across all these organizing efforts to make a workplace that is equitable & worker-centric.
Koby Ljunggren
Biophysics
This fall, I began my first year in the Biophysics PhD Program. Coming from a smaller state school in the Midwest, I saw the struggles that graduate student workers faced with high work expectations, low wages, and little institutional support when it was desperately needed. In the transition to Harvard, I’ve noticed that graduate student workers struggle with many of the same issues here. It is my mission to uphold and take care of the collective bargaining power that resides in HGSU, and I believe I can work toward that mission as a member of the bargaining committee on behalf of DMS. Personally, I believe that union organizing around our contract is the best way for graduate student workers to achieve some semblance of justice. We make valuable contributions to the university, and it’s time we flex our collective power to find solutions that best serve our needs—workplace harassment and discrimination protections in the interest of racial and gender justice, pay-rate equity across schools, and broader access to union benefits and healthcare. With a mixed-indigenous upbringing and a background in LGBTQ+ activism in STEM, I also hope to provide much-needed perspective to the bargaining committee. I believe the intersection of identity and labor organizing will be driving force for this bargaining period. Though I don’t claim to speak on behalf of communities, I do believe my perspective will help ensure that HGSU acts in the best interest of all its members. I’d be humbled to serve in this role.
Brandon Mancilla
History
I am a fourth year PhD Student in History and have been serving as our union’s President since the Fall of 2020. Having led our local this year, I have also learned directly from organizers and rank-and-file members about the impact that a contract has on our work and lives and what we can improve upon. In 2019, we went on strike for a living wage, health care, and a grievance procedure for harassment and discrimination. Our first contract, though an important step, did not fully resolve our demands. Furthermore, since the beginning of the pandemic, student workers have kept this University’s courses, research, and labs running under increasingly stressful conditions. It should not be a surprise to the administration that the past year has taken a toll on our work, academic progress, and physical and mental health. As a bargaining committee member, I will bring both the long running issues of our campaign and the new ones to the table.
Cory McCartan
Statistics
I’m a second-year PhD student in statistics, and I’m running for the Bargaining Committee to expand the protections we won in our last contract, and to continue the fight for our core priorities, including:
– job security and stability, and continued cost-of-living adjustments;
– stronger protections against racial discrimination and sexual harassment, including but not limited to third-party arbitration; and
– affordable health care without limits for all of our members.
I served from 2019–2020 on the Bargaining Committee that negotiated our first contract, and before that, as an undergraduate, I founded UGSDW, the first independent undergraduate labor union in the US, where I negotiated three contracts for student food service workers. I hope to use my experience negotiating with Harvard, and with bargaining in general, to further advance our goals and win key demands.
The return of in-person classes slated for fall 2021 presents us with significant leverage and a unique opportunity to demand the kinds of protections and workplace improvements we’ve needed for years. But to make the most of that opportunity will require more than diligent bargaining work—it will require union-wide vision and focus, and relentless organizing over the next twelve months. I am committed to a participatory bargaining process that reflects the needs of our members and builds power across campus to secure a fantastic second contract.
Ricky Sanchez (she/her)
English
I am a first-year doctoral student in the English department with an activism background rooted in queer Black feminist thought and leadership. In addition to my work in grassroots organizing, I have worked with administrators and guided changes to improve the experiences of queer and POC victims and survivors of sexual assault at Tulane University, where I received my BA and MA in English.
I am running for a position on the bargaining committee because I am excited to bring the work I have been doing as co-chair of the Feminist and Racial Justice Working Groups to the bargaining process. By representing as many members of our bargaining unit as possible, I believe that we can formulate and support short- and long-term demands that:
– activate sustaining change
– better support student health
– affirm the experiences of queer students and students of color at Harvard
Using my grassroots and university-based experiences, I hope to move away from mechanisms that keep us trapped in cycles of “working toward” progress and move toward actively meeting students’ demands.
Ash Tomaszewski
Harvard Law School
My name is Ash Tomaszewski and I am running for bargaining committee for the College, Law, and Professional school student workers. I am a first generation, trans, and low income law student with several years experience working in food service and union organization. I am dedicated to labor reform and organizing and am so excited to help work towards a new and better contract for all student workers here at Harvard. In the past I’ve worked with GEO at the University of Michigan during their historic strike just this fall and helped organize a restaurant and cafe workers’ union in my area. This union went through nine months of negotiations during which we received support from dozens of local unions including the IWW, HVALF, GEO, LEO, and former UAW president Bob King. My time at UofM taught me that we can have a powerful, unified, and successful union and a several year contract and I am incredibly excited to be more involved in making that happen.
