Frequently Asked Questions

A message from our Bargaining Committee: We put together these FAQS to help answer questions about negotiations as we work through this exciting moment in our history. We hope this page will be useful to you. Please get in touch at hgsu.general@gmail.com if you have a question we haven’t answered here.

The Bargaining Process

To keep up with how bargaining is going, check our page of bargaining updates or sign an authorization card to get our updates by email!

After our union election in April, our union elected 13 student workers to our Bargaining Committee. These student workers represent many departments from all across the university, and bargain for the interests of student workers with the administration. We also work closely with experienced UAW staff who have helped with bargaining other student worker contracts.

On the administration side, they are represented by 17 individuals, including one lawyer from the law firm, Morgan, Brown and Joy; Paul Curran, Director of Labor Relations and Employee Relations; representatives from the General Counsel’s and the Provost’s offices, a number of Deans and administrators; and four faculty members.

Bargaining starts when either bargaining committee presents initial proposals. Each committee makes counter-proposals, and this kicks off the back-and-forth until the two parties reach a “tentative agreement.” Each stage of this process—presenting initial proposals, receiving counter-proposals, and reaching an agreement—has the potential to be quite time intensive, depending in large part on how far apart the two sides are on important issues.
Our union, will only start seeing improvements once we vote on and ratify the contract, and the contract is in place. Even if our bargaining committee and the university reach a tentative agreement on a specific provision, that provision won’t go into place until the entire contract is ratified. We will also only begin paying dues once we vote in the contract and it goes into effect. As the bargaining committee, we strongly believe that it is in the interest of not only student workers, but also the Harvard community as a whole, to complete contract negotiations by the end of Spring 2018. This would allow us to prepare for a contract that goes into effect for the 2019-2020 academic year, and reduce uncertainty over when student workers will begin to benefit from the improvements in working conditions and worker protections that we will work to gain in our contract.
Bargaining takes as short or as long as it needs to: contracts can be settled in weeks or can take years. It depends largely on how willing the employer is to compromise on the issues that workers care the most about. For instance, at the University of Connecticut, the administration largely refused to bargain until the student workers ran an effective pressure campaign. Finally—but only under intense pressure from student workers—a strong, effective contract (with comprehensive health care benefits and sexual harassment protections) was hammered out in just a few weeks.
We offered several dates in September because we knew bargaining would take time and we did not want to delay. But the administration offered only five negotiation dates for Fall 2018. We met on October 15, November 5 and November 19. We have two more dates scheduled for December 3, and December 17. Each session was originally scheduled to last for four hours. After one bargaining session, our Bargaining Committee quickly recognized that we would not be able to make much progress with the limited time offered, and we requested more time at the bargaining table. The administration responded to this request by proposing only an extra 45 minutes each session.
Tell the administration that you care about ensuring a fair and thorough bargaining process.Sign this public petition requesting more bargaining time. The more time we get at the table, and the more strongly all of us can convey to the administration that we want to reach an agreement in a timely fashion, the more likely it is that we will win the protections that we as a union are proposing.
We are proposing a fair contract that will improve the lives of student workers across the university. The proposals drafted by the bargaining committee reflect the democratically ratified bargaining goals. This includes provisions on equity and inclusivity, compensation, health benefits, job security and transparency, international student worker protections, leaves of absence, childcare, transportation, training and professional development, healthy work environment, union recognition and rights, and more.
Generally, contract language is not shared publicly while it is still under negotiation. When the administration begins to give us the time needed to bargain the fair contract we need, proposals will change rapidly as we go back and forth on each of the proposals to reach a tentative agreement. However, the contracts of other student worker unions give a good guide of what kind of language is on the table. Check out the contracts of other UAW-affiliated student worker unions: University of Washington, UConn, and NYU. If you have specific concerns, reach out to your department leader, or contact the Bargaining Committee.
The bargaining committee is using feedback from over 1,600 bargaining surveys, as well as outreach to individuals and students groups with experience or expertise on important issues. We will consider all input from bargaining surveys up until the relevant contract proposal has been “settled” in negotiations. Contact us directly at with any questions or concerns.
The Office of Labor and Employee Relations
When both sides have reached tentative agreement on all contract provisions, we will conduct a contract ratification vote. Student workers who have signed authorization cards are eligible to vote on whether or not they approve the contract. If the contract is approved by a majority of those who vote, the contract will then go into effect on the agreed upon date.

What can I do to support negotiations?

Negotiating a contract can be a long and time-intensive process. The first step to making sure that we have a contract ready for the 2019-2020 academic year, and to avoid negotiations that drag on for years, is to make sure enough time has been allotted to negotiations. If you support having a contract negotiated in a timely fashion, please sign the bargaining time petition here and ask your peers to do the same!

The truth is that we cannot win a strong contract without the active support of you and other members. In fact, all successful recent grad union contract negotiations, including at NYU, University of California, University of Connecticut, and many more, have required continuous support from students workers and other community members. Right now, you can:

  • Stay informed. This is a prerequisite to engaging in any civic process – be sure to follow our bargaining updates!
  • Show your support publicly, online and offline. Re-share our posts on social media. Wear a button and/or t-shirt. Post flyers in your lab or department. Request HGSU-UAW swag here!
  • Provide a testimonial during negotiations. If you have a personal experience with an issue that you are willing to share, you could play a critical role in winning a contract provision.  Share your testimonial here!
  • Build our union by organizing in your department or with one of our committees. We have four issue-based committees: Time’s Up (sexual and gender-based harassment), Civil and Human Rights, the International Scholars Working Group, and Mental Health and Academic Life.
  • Be ready to act. Our Bargaining Committee may ask you to demonstrate your support for our contract proposals by signing a petition (such as the bargaining time petition), writing a letter, showing up to a rally, or any number of things!

If you are a voting member of our union, you should be receiving bargaining updates via email immediately after each negotiation session (please contact us at hgsu.general@gmail.com if you’re not getting them). You can also read the bargaining updates on our website.

However, we also highly encourage you to reach out to leaders in your department or school for a more in-depth conversation, if they haven’t been in touch already. You can view the list of leaders who have signed on our to our bargaining time petition. There is a lot that happens during negotiations—not to mention in between—that we may be able to fully cover in our updates, including how to best support the issues that you care about.

Finally, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We share not only updates on negotiations and our own events, but also important news from around Harvard and other student worker unions. Feel free to DM us!

One of the most impactful things you can do to support negotiations is to provide a personal testimonial during negotiations. Testimonials have been a critical component of winning contract provisions at other universities, and it is helpful for the administration’s bargaining committee to be able to put a face to an issue. Please get in touch with a member of our Bargaining Committee at hgsu.general@gmail.com

How can I get involved with organizing with HGSU-UAW in my department/school or with one of the committees?

The most important way to make sure that you and your co-workers have a voice in contract negotiations is to organize for our union in your own department, program, or school. We encourage you to reach out directly to the leaders that you know, those who have signed the bargaining time petition, or to contact us at hgsu.general@gmail.com if you don’t know who they are. Organizing may sound intimidating if you haven’t done it before, but it just means getting comfortable with having conversations with your peers about our union and how we can win a strong contract.

Another important way you can get involved with organizing is to join one of our four issue-based committees, which not only support contract negotiations, but also seek to build solidarity on shared issues across our university. Contact us to learn more about our work and when our meetings are:

  • Civil and Human Rights Committee (hgsu.chrc@gmail.com)
  • International Scholars Working Group (contact Fan-Yun Lan at flan@g.harvard.edu)
  • Mental Health and Academic Life Committee (hgsumentalhealth@gmail.com)
  • Time’s Up Committee, which focuses on on sexual and gender-based harassment (harvardtimesup@gmail.com)
There are other ways to help, too, such as with communications, social media, graphic design, outreach, event planning, and more! We need you. Get in touch at hgsu.general@gmail.com to tell us how you’d like to help.

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  • general@hgsu.org
  • 552 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 209 Cambridge, MA 02139

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