Frequently Asked Questions
STRIKING
For more than a year, the Harvard administration has repeatedly ignored majority support for HGSU-UAW bargaining and our urging for a fair first contract. We have called on them to move faster on many of our core issues:
• February to March – A majority of Student workers signed a petition calling on Harvard admins to stop the delays and bargain a fair contract;
• March – student workers rallied calling on the administration to provide fair protections from harassment and discrimination, including arbitration, just like every other contract at Harvard. More than 350 people rallied and delivered our petition to President Bacow;
• April – more than 450 student workers participated in a work in wearing t-shirts and working around the Smith Center, to highlight our work while demanding a fair contract now;
• May Day – More than 500 student workers picketed outside University Hall, while more than 30 student workers staged a sit in inside the building;
• July – more than 325 leaders from nearly every department on campus signed an open letter demanding Harvard admins bargain a fair contract now, or they would begin organizing for a strike. Since then, even more have signed the open letter.
We hoped Harvard would be different, but the administration continues to waste resources paying high priced lawyers to delay negotiations and try to drag out the process, preventing us from winning our fair contract. The intransigence of our administration has gone on far too long. After trying many alternatives over the last year, student workers from all across campus now believe we must prepare to take a strike vote as we expand our efforts to win a fair contract.
Voting will take place by secret ballot. Strong voter turnout means greater power. If ⅔ of the votes are in favor, the bargaining committee is authorized to call a strike. Eligible voters are Harvard student workers who have signed a HGSU-UAW authorization card and are currently employed by the university, previously employed by the university, or expect to be employed by the university in one of the categories outlined by the election agreement. If you meet the above criteria and have not signed up for the Union previously, you will be able to do so at the polls in order to vote.
Not necessarily. A strike authorization vote authorizes the union bargaining committee to call a strike if they deem it necessary, but it does not mean we will strike right away. Typically, we would give some time before actually striking for the university to agree to our demands in order to avert a strike and the disruption it would cause to campus activities. We will do everything in our power to ensure that our strike is a last resort and that it is effective.
A strike is a coordinated stoppage of work aimed at convincing an employer to meet employee demands. In our case, TFs, RAs, TAs, CAs, and others who choose to participate in the strike would stop our paid work doing grading, research, and teaching on campus in order to send a message to the administration to bargain our contract now. If you are unsure of how you would participate in a strike, reach out to us a hgsu.general@gmail.com.
Our bargaining committee would only call a strike some time after a democratic vote authorizing them to call such a strike.
If it becomes necessary to strike, the more student workers participate, the more power our action will have to bring the administration to a fair agreement. But, ultimately, it is an individual choice whether or not to participate. There are no union penalties for any student worker who chooses not to participate.
For all student workers employed as TFs, TAs, CAs, and RAs, participating in a strike means withholding all paid work. If you are unsure about whether your position is in the bargaining unit, or how your participation in a strike would be defined, please contact us at hgsu.general@gmail.com. Students cannot withhold their own coursework or other academic duties as part of a strike.
In addition to stopping our work, we would also engage in large, visible organized picketing — protesting at various locations around the campuses in order to make our action visible and effective. Additionally, we could ask that other unionized workers to do whatever they can to support our strike; for example, delivery drivers might refuse to cross our picket lines to bring packages to campus. Strikes commonly involve rallies and community events to show solidarity and pressure.
The decision to participate in a strike is a big one and is up to each individual to decide whether they want to participate. In the event of a strike that lasts more than seven days, all striking workers are eligible to receive strike pay from the United Auto Workers (the national union we are affiliated with) of up to $250 per week for the duration of the strike. We could also raise money independently for those who would face extreme hardship in a strike (e.g. those with families).
Strikes can be for a limited amount of time or indefinitely until you win that over which you are striking. The type of strike would be determined by our democratically elected bargaining committee. We hope that the administration would agree to our demands in order to avert a strike. However, if we do have to strike, the goal would be to demonstrate how indispensable student workers are. The best way to ensure a successful strike would be by having high participation to highlight the importance for winning a fair first contract.
The law protects our right to strike. Since the 1970s, thousands of RAs and TAs across the US – including at Columbia, The New School, and University of Chicago just in the last year and a half – have engaged in lawful strike activity without being fired.
In addition to legal protection, the best protection we have is our ability to protect one another. High participation is our best protection since it makes it difficult to single out anyone even if Harvard did contemplate such an extreme action. Historically, workers have sometimes chosen to stay on strike until any union members who have experienced retaliation are made whole. That is a significant power of our union.
In addition, we will be reaching out to other community supporters. By engaging with our community (faculty, staff, political leaders, alumni, other campuses), we can make sure there is support behind our campaign as well. Successful strikes bring a community together because a contract will serve not only us, but our whole community, by raising standards of working conditions and enabling us to do our best work.
You can stay informed by joining our mailing list here: https://harvardgradunion.org. You can also reach out to a HGSU-UAW organizer by emailing hgsu.general@gmail.com to talk more about how you can get involved.
Yes, you would not have legal or academic protection if you refuse to go to classes you are taking to fulfill your own academic progress. You cannot strike from your academic duties. Contact an organizer if you want to discuss what striking would look like for your specific situation: hgsu.general@gmail.com.
The law protects our right to strike and makes it illegal for Harvard to retaliate for protected activity. Thousands of student workers have gone on strike across the US and have avoided this problem. As a union, we have rallied around students for support and we will continue to do so. Again, mass participation and the strength of our union are our best protections against Harvard even contemplating this kind of extreme action.
Administrations’ anti-strike campaigns often target international students because their visa status makes them more vulnerable. You should know that international students have the same rights as US citizens to participate in union activity. It is illegal for Harvard to retaliate for protected activity. Thousands of international student workers across the United States have gone on strike and been otherwise active in their unions for more than 40 years, including at Columbia last year. See also this article from the University of Illinois Chicago international students about their participation in their strike.
If it becomes necessary to go on strike, we will strive to communicate with our students in advance so that they understand that our strike is a last resort response to Harvard’s continual delay in the negotiations for our union contract, and specifically their denial of basic protections from harassment and discrimination. Our teaching and research conditions are their learning conditions: if we win a fair contract, we and this University will serve our students better. Our students are a key part of our strike as colleagues in our unit and as allies in our community. We would encourage them to contact the administration and resolve the strike before it even happens so their education is not disrupted.
A partial strike consists of you doing part of your TA/RAship work and striking on the other part, and would be unprotected by labor law. For example, holding off-campus sessions for your students during a strike period could be regarded as a partial strike of your TAship. Partial striking does not carry the legal protections of full strike participation, and should be avoided.
Yes – we are scheduling training sessions so that we can learn from experienced strikers about how a strike can be most effective and maintain high participation levels. We encourage everyone to take part in organizing towards a strike by getting involved. Email hgsu.general@gmail.com to meet with an organizer and participate to the best of your ability.
We need you on the picket line! The bigger our picket line, the bigger the disruption. In addition, this is a fundamental reason to form a union: individually we do not have a lot of power here at Harvard. But with a union, we combine our power to fight for improved benefits. While your choice alone may not be large, together with the rest of your peers, it will be powerful!
One way to be noticeable is to help increase participation in your department. Having a whole department show up at the strike is important for visibility, and can help bring more publicity to the strike.
Strikes are more effective when there is large participation, but it is an individual choice to participate. Our union will not penalize members who do not participate in a strike.
You are not obligated to tell anyone about participating in a strike, but you can and should talk to them. Ideally, we want them to tell the administration to bargain so that the strike can be avoided. You can read our talking points on how to talk to faculty here, or direct them our FAQ page for faculty.
After our election agreement with Harvard University in 2016, and then further after the hearings in 2017-2018, we got a clear picture of who is eligible to be in our union:
“All students enrolled in Harvard degree programs employed by the Employer who provide instructional services at Harvard University, including graduate and undergraduate Teaching Fellows (teaching assistants, teaching fellows, course assistants); and all students enrolled in Harvard degree programs (other than undergraduate students at Harvard College) employed by the Employer who serve as Research Assistants (regardless of funding sources, including those compensated through Training Grants). This unit includes students employed by Harvard University and enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Business School, the Division of Continuing Education, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Harvard Graduate Schoo of Education, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Harvard Law School, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Harvard College.”
If you are not sure whether your position is covered, please contact us at hgsu.general@gmail.com, and we can identify if you are able to participate.
BARGAINING
In April of 2018, we formed our union, elected our bargaining committee, and began the process of bargaining. Below are some of the common questions about the bargaining process:
No. The bargaining team’s goal is to protect student workers from being exploited by people with more power than they, like faculty or administrators. To that end, the framework we propose puts restrictions on the amount of workrequired of a student worker, but not on the amount of work a student worker can choose to perform. It does not serve our community to prevent people from doing the work they came to Harvard to do.
No. We recognize that our membership comes from a diverse range of fields, with different work standards, and we value the flexible nature of student work. However, we are striving to prevent scheduling that allows no work/life balance.
The bargaining survey we all filled out gives us what the priorities are for our members. That said, this is not a zero-sum game. Harvard is one of the richest universities in the world, and Unions at other universities—including public universities—have gained comprehensive packages that cover most of our proposals. There is no reason why Harvard University cannot provide better working conditions for student workers.
Each side presents the proposals and counter proposals they have prepared in advance of the bargaining session. We then break up amongst our sides to caucus and go over the proposals. We then come back and discuss any questions the two sides have for each other. We often develop some counter proposals before the end of the session and finished the remaining proposals over the next period we have between sessions. However the administration comes back with a handful proposals (if any at all) at each session. Each proposal is changed in an attempt to find common ground. It is clear from how long it takes for the administration to make responses to our proposals that they are not interested in getting this done quickly. Our union was certified almost a year ago: why are they not doing their job?
The administration has a responsibility to check each proposal to ensure the proposals would not harm the academic mission of the university. However, there is nothing stopping the administration from having those people in the room or calling these people if there are concerns. The administration has had more than a year to build their team, and had more than a dozen people moving in and out of the room over the span of negotiations, and has had nearly all our proposals in front of them for months, yet we are still negotiating on topics we proposed last October. This is a result of their desire to drag out the process, and this is one of the excuses they create to justify these delays.
The time the administration is willing to give at the bargaining table is a sign of their unwillingness to finish the contract. At other universities, like the University of Connecticut and New York University, when they were ready to finish the contract, the student workers negotiated very frequently to get a contract in a timely manner. Here at Harvard, we have seen similar in their contract negotiations with the existing unions. We are asking them for more time because we want a commitment from them, and the movement necessary at the table, to get a contract in place before the beginning of the next academic year.
Union and the administration agree that contract violations should be subjected to a grievance procedure which end stage involves third-party arbitration. The administration maintains that this protection selectively applies to contract proposals—carving out our harassment and discrimination protections. Visit our #NoCarveOut page and FAQ for more information.
The grievance procedure that we proposed would be a process for resolving any disputes that may arise over the interpretation or violation of the contract. It is comprised of a number of steps. At each step the parties involved will try to find a resolution, with the ability to appeal to an external neutral arbitrator as the final step. The steps we proposed are: Step 1 [optional]: informal talks between you, the union rep, and the relevant faculty member or whoever the issue concerns Step 2:The department chair Step 3: The relevant dean or their office Step 4: Arbitrator, issues binding resolutions based on the facts presented by both the Union and the Administration. The arbitrator is a neutral party not employed by the University and therefore has not conflict of interest. For harassment and discrimination complaints we think this process should be started at Step 3.
Yes, the position of the administration is out of line with many other contracts. The University of Washington contract explicitly states that such cases may be filed either internally or through the grievance procedure in their contract. The University of Connecticut additionally allows for an expedited grievance procedure in cases of discrimination or harassment, allowing people to skip the first two steps of the grievance procedure. Our own campus union HUDS Local 26 has harassment and discrimination protections through union grievance procedure. Visit our #NoCarveout page for more information.
The training and policies regarding sexual and gender-based harassment frequently are more tailored to silencing the case than to actually addressing the root causes of the harassment, as argued in the 2017 National Academies of Engineering, Medicine, and Science report. The administration benefits from keeping cases internal by making it difficult to establish patterns and identify powerful predators, and thus prevent scandals. It is not until a brave person publishes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that these cases are brought out into the light, that survivors can connect with each other and that patterns become obvious. Visit our #NoCarveout page for more information.
We are proposing a raise for everyone, so that each member receives a net pay increase. Our intention is to have increases large enough to offset the dues we will be paying, which is set at 1.44% of our income. We know most people will not vote for a contract which will have a loss in income, so we are negotiating with that in mind.
Under the current health insurance plan provided to many, but not all, members of our union, mental health coverage is extremely limited. Students have access to Harvard’s Counseling and Mental Health Services(CAMHS), which does not address all of the mental health needs of our members. When CAMHS is not sufficient, or CAMHS says they cannot provide the type of care necessary, students must go to outside specialists for help. The first 8 visits are fully covered, but the next 32 require a copay, and there is no coverage beyond 40 appointments per year, which is not enough for chronic issues requiring weekly visits. We hope to expand mental health coverage to be year round, without the current copays. We also hope to make the care more effective by expanding the number of referral coordinators to help students find providers who can match the needs of their background, experiences, or identity. Currently, the University does not pay for dental insurance, but there is a plan that they make available to students. We want to make sure that a comprehensive dental plan is provided by the University at no cost to us.
Here is a detailed breakdown of our contract proposals:
- A large proposal on harassment and discrimination, which includes marginalized groups in addition to the federally observed ones, and covers far more cases of abuse, harassment and discrimination.
- Four proposals around appointments, job security, and discipline & discharge, including clear statements of job duties, start dates, and protections from being unjustly disciplined.
- A proposal on workload, aimed at preventing abuse or exploitation of student workers.
- A proposal on compensation, with the goal of allowing people to comfortably afford to live and go to school in the Boston area
- A proposal on titles and classifications, which clarifies the types of work people do, so that we can make sure workers are getting paid fairly and understand clearly their responsibilities
- Several proposals that help create a safety net, from disability insurance, to family friendly benefits (like child care subsidies and parental leave), from transportation perks, to food service discounts, employee assistance programs, retirement contributions, tax assistance, and emergency grants. These are standard for staff and the rest of the campus.
- Two proposals on adequate health benefits (e.g. vision coverage, dental coverage, dependent coverage), mental health coverage, and the services of HUHS.
- A pair of proposals to protect and expand tuition waivers and expand financial aid to fight student debt.
- A proposal on employment records, so that student workers can access and control the records they may need for future employment.
- The grievance and arbitration proposal, which is used to enforce our contract, with the last step being arbitration by a neutral third party.
- Several structural proposals, including a severability clause (if one clause is invalid, rest remains in force), the recognition clause (who is in the unit; which we had to fight for because the administration wanted a more restricted scope than what we all had previously agreed with the NLRB), a successorship clause (what happens if Harvard is purchased by another entity), a past practices clause to keep current benefits in place, and one barring subcontracting (i.e. don’t displace student workers if you can hire cheaper subcontractors).
- Several proposals on travel, materials, workspace and safety, to prevent student workers from paying out of their pocket for research materials or datasets, and work in environments that may pose unreasonable risks.
- A pair of proposals on vacations and holidays, so we have a clear calendar (per school) and clear policies to ensure that every student worker can take time off.
- A pair of proposals on leaves, ensuring that student workers have access to paid time off for unforeseen circumstances with their family or their own medical condition, or to handle immigration issues, and to ensure that we have access to sensible disability insurance.
- A proposal on housing, to make on campus housing and University owned housing more affordable and accessible.
- A proposal specifically for international students workers, which provides resources to people affected by discriminatory policies, like the Muslim ban, and expands the English language resources available for student workers to do their best work while they are here.
- A proposal on intellectual property, so no student worker has to endure cases of academic bullying, and to provide recourse in case of authorship disputes..
- A pair of proposals on professional development and training.
- A group of three proposals covering Union rights, Union security, and the Voluntary Community Action Program. These provide HGSU-UAW with the tools to effectively represent members and collect dues as painlessly as possible.
In addition to these, we have received two proposals from the administration, one stipulating management rights, and one barring us from being able to strike. These proposals will be addressed at the end of the negotiations.
If you want to read the current version of a proposal, please contact us at HGSU.general@gmail.com, or come to one of our events to meet bargaining committee members that we are holding across the University. We believe that we can represent our proposals best if we can have a conversation about them with you.
WHY UNION?
Before we won our collective bargaining rights, we have experienced precarious funding, late paychecks, increasing teaching loads, inadequate medical coverage for ourselves and our families, job and wage insecurity, a lack of transparency in administrative policies, and a lack of professionalism that stems from our labor not being recognized as work. With a union contract, we will have a voice in our benefits and working conditions, and Harvard would need our consent to set our terms of employment.
BENEFITS OF UNIONIZATION AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
- Unions provide a stronger voice. Collective bargaining through the UAW has enabled RAs and TAs to negotiate improvements to pay, benefits and rights at other universities, both historically and in the last few years. Click here to review concrete examples of what RAs and TAs, as well as postdocs and contingent faculty, have won at other universities.
- Unions provide a democratic voice. RAs and TAs in the UAW have participated vigorously in their unions through bargaining surveys, participating in contract campaign activities, and voting on improvements negotiated in final contracts. At the University of Connecticut in 2014-15, for example, a majority of all 2,100 RAs and TAs participated in five different actions, including voting “yes” to approve significant improvements in their first union contract.
- Unions enable us to advance social justice in the academy and beyond. In addition to winning basic improvements in pay and benefits, UAW academic unions, including HGSU-UAW, have also been increasingly focused on winning a more just and inclusive workplace by taking on sexual harassment, taking on the tuition tax, fighting discrimination against international academic workers, and advocating for science funding.
The priorities of our members are reflected in our bargaining goals but we also have numerous examples of how other groups of RAs and TAs have made improvements through collective bargaining. You can review more thorough summaries of particular contracts on the HGSU-UAW website, but see below for a few concrete examples. New York University: in the first-ever RA/TA union contract at a private university in 2002, the union won a 38% increase to minimum stipends. This increase not only improved life at NYU, but raise national standards in ways that continue to affect RA and TA conditions today. In fact, since unionization in 2001-02, including the negotiation of a second contract in 2015 that includes extra pay for teaching work, total compensation rates for PhD student workers at NYU have increased by 189%. University of Connecticut: UConn graduate assistants (GAs) negotiated a nearly 7% annual increase in total compensation (stipends plus new fee waivers) in their first union contract in 2015. They also negotiated dramatically-improved health benefits – on par with full-time state employees – with no increase in premium costs for GAs and their families.
Union contracts typically include a grievance procedure, which provides due process to a member (or the union as an organization) if a problem arises during the contract or the administration is not fairly adhering to the contract. Though many grievances are resolved quickly and informally, most contracts allow for unresolved grievances to be taken to an outside neutral arbitrator whose decision is legally binding. This type of system is fairer than a system that ends with a university administrator deciding whether the university violated any policy. For example, GSOC at NYU recently won an arbitration case involving NYU’s wrongful denial of tuition remission benefits to workers in the School of Education and the School of Social Work. Affected graduate workers received a refund of approximately $1500/semester for each semester they were affected. At the University of Washington, the union over the years has recovered millions of dollars for members through its grievance procedure. A fair grievance process is equally important for non-economic issues such as sexual harassment, where it is critical that a survivor have access to fair recourse through a neutral decision-make rather than someone who works for the University. At UConn, for example, graduate assistants have already successfully used their grievance process to address cases of sexual harassment.
Student governments represent and support all Harvard students: they fund student groups, award grants, sponsor events, and communicate student concerns to university administrators. However, these groups do not have the power to negotiate a binding contract on behalf of student workers, and the administration is under no obligation to act on any recommendations or requests that the student government might make. Student governments are a critical component to enhancing the lives of students but unlike a union they do not have the ability to bargain collectively over our working conditions. The administration has a legal obligation to bargain with HGSU-UAW as equals over things like wages, healthcare, a fair grievance procedure and protections against sexual harassment and discrimination.
No. There is no evidence of collective bargaining having any of these effects. Both the union membership and the administration have to agree on a contract and neither party would want that result. Collective bargaining simply means we can negotiate as equals in order to hold Harvard more accountable to do the best it can do.
As an example of how this plays out, in the first contract for postdocs at the University of California, the union negotiated significant pay increases, and the union and the university agreed to a phase-in process so that PIs would have the ability to accommodate the improvements without disrupting current research. Before collective bargaining, the University decided such things unilaterally, and some postdocs made as little as $18,000 per year even though UC had a “policy” stipulating that the minimum postdoc salary should have been $37,000.
Empirically, the overall number of RAs (and TAs) has grown at the University of Washington since unionization in 2004, as has the number of postdocs at the University of California since unionization in 2008. Overall grant revenue has also increased at UW and UC over those years, showing that these institutions remain competitive in recruiting top talent to their research programs.
No. Collective bargaining has not produced that result at other universities. At the University of Washington, probably the most similar to us since it has a large medical school with hundreds of RAs, a variable pay system existed before the contract and continues under the contract. Under that system, there are minimum pay rates that all departments must follow, but departments are free to pay higher rates. Graduate workers at UW democratically chose to preserve that system, and, while those at the lower pay rates have experienced larger increases, everyone’s pay has gone up after unionization. In other words, contrary to what administrators are saying, bargaining can actually enable us to ensure that Harvard does not irrationally impose limits in places where it is unnecessary. For example, last year when Harvard cut the PhD worker pay increase in half due to endowment performance, it applied the lower pay increase even to STEM RAs whose funding has little or no connection to the endowment. In another example, under the first contract at NYU, the minimum stipends for the poorest-paid workers went up 38% over 4 years, while the small number of people above the minimum got at least a 15% raise over 4 years. Again, no one took a pay cut. In the second contract at NYU, the lowest paid workers at NYU Poly received signing bonuses of up to $1,500 and will see their hourly wage double (from $10 to $20 per hour) over the life of the contract, while the highest paid PhD workers received signing bonuses of up to $750 and will see their total compensation increase by roughly 13 percent. A slightly different example is UConn, where graduate assistants had the same pay rates before unionization and the contract raised all those by 3% per year (in addition to significant increases in fee waivers that are worth an additional 3.2-7.6 percent wage increase, depending on FTE and academic standing). The contract also ensures additional step increases based on academic progress. In all cases, these guaranteed gains were larger than the small percentage in membership dues, which is why these contracts were overwhelmingly ratified. Feel free to read summaries of the before and after effects of collective bargaining at these and various other universities on the HGSU-UAW website. At Harvard, we will decide what to bargain for and we will determine our own fates collectively with the ratification of our contract. In hundreds of conversations across the campuses over the last three years, no one has said the Union should propose leveling pay or that anyone should take a pay cut, so we can rest assured pay leveling will not be a union proposal.
Many student employees are happy with aspects of our working conditions and benefits right now. But because we don’t have a contract, the administration can change the policies that affect us at any time, without consulting student employees, and without giving us any recourse. Just this past year the administration raised student health insurance copays and increased our contribution to the plan. Without a union, we have no security and no seat at the table when decisions affecting our lives and work are made by administrators. With a union we get to negotiate a contract that will protect the benefits we like and secure improvements in areas where we would like to see progress.
Currently, Harvard administrators determine RA pay rates unilaterally, and those rates – as well as projected increases – are then factored into grant proposals to agencies like NIH, NSF, DOD, etc. With collective bargaining, we’ll be able to negotiate over those pay rates. Grant-funded RAs at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut and the University of Washington, as well as postdocs at the University of California, have negotiated guaranteed annual increases to their pay rates through collective bargaining.
QUESTIONS ABOUT “CONCERNS” RAISED BY HARVARD ADMINISTRATORS
For more detailed answers to the following and related questions, please visit the section of our website with responses to the many emails sent by Harvard administrators.
- Unionized RAs and TAs at more than 60 university campuses across the US have successfully negotiated contracts that cover similarly diverse departments, including the University of Washington that, like Harvard, has a large, nationally-ranked biomedical research program. We are confident we can do the same.
We will make that decision for ourselves through a democratic vote on whether to accept any contract negotiated by our elected bargaining committee. The track record of robust democratic participation in recent contract ratification votes in UAW academic unions makes us confident we can make that decision wisely. As one example, a majority of all graduate assistants at UConn voted to ratify their first contract in 2015 that included a nearly 7% annual increase in total compensation.
After decades of collective bargaining at more than 60 campuses across the US, no one has produced evidence that unionization has damaged faculty-graduate student relationships.
UAW Academic workers with the right to strike, such as RAs and TAs at UW and NYU and postdocs at UC, have used the possibility of strikes democratically and effectively, reaching strong agreements with their administrations without having to actually strike.
A majority (93% of those who voted, which is 1958 out of the 3600 student worker unit) of the Columbia student workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike because the administration has defied its legal obligation to bargain with the union. The strong strike vote is just another sign that, despite winning numerous improvements over the last two years, graduate workers will keep organizing until the administration agrees to secure these and additional improvements in a fair contract that makes economic gains and establishes meaningful workplace rights on issues like sexual harassment. Starting in spring 2016, as majority support for the union continued to grow and it became clear GWC-UAW would win the historic NLRB case restoring union rights, Columbia made a number of improvements to graduate worker pay and benefits, including:
- Unprecedented announcement of four years of stipend increases in advance
- Doubling of childcare subsidies
- Increase in the amount of paid family leave
- $5,000 adoption subsidy
- Fully-paid family health insurance coverage
- Additional fee waivers in Engineering
- Expansion of tuition/fee waivers, health insurance and leave benefits to professional schools
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UNITED AUTO WORKERS AND ITS DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURES
- Over three years ago, hundreds of Harvard graduate students chose to work with the UAW as our parent union. The UAW now represents more than 70,000 academic workers across the US, including more RAs and TAs than any other union, including those at NYU, Columbia, Boston College, the University of California system, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Washington. By organizing with the UAW, we gain access to experience with successfully negotiating quality contracts with student workers and the significant resources we need for taking on a university administration like Harvard. All these strengths help us build the strongest possible union and win the best possible contract. By joining together with tens of thousands of other academic workers in the UAW, we also gain a stronger political voice. RAs and TAs, postdocs, and non-tenure-track faculty have helped make the UAW a leading national voice on issues that matter to us — advocating to expand opportunities for international students to work in the US after graduation, opposing the travel bans and tuition tax, and pushing for robust federal investment in science research.
The alleged activity of these individuals, which has led to indictment of one former national UAW leader, is appalling, highly unusual and goes against the fundamental values of transparency and accountability the UAW has upheld for more than 80 years. This activity did not involve UAW membership dues money, but rather Chrysler money that funds the National Training Center (NTC). Fortunately, the UAW has a long-standing, strict system of transparency and accountability to prevent individuals from misusing members’ dues money. The Union has worked actively with Chrysler to see that financial protections and oversight are in place to prevent this type of thing from occurring again at the NTC. Last fall, after indictments were issued in the UAW-Chrysler NTC investigation, the federal government began an inquiry into the joint program centers the UAW has established through collective bargaining.
The alleged behavior of those leaders is appalling. While some local union leaders have been resistant to the union being a vehicle to address issues of sexual harassment, academic locals have addressed these issues through the union with increasing success. The appalling behavior of leaders in another workplace does not negate the fact that unionization enables us to negotiate stronger avenues of recourse, such as graduate assistants did at the university of Connecticut and postdocs at the University of California. At UConn, for example, graduate assistants have used their grievance process to successfully resolve instances of harassment.
A member in the union at UC appealed the vote for numerous reasons, including that he thought the vote exceeded the Local Union’s authority under the democratic structure of the UAW Constitution. The UAW International Executive Board (IEB), and, subsequently, an independent review board unique to the UAW agreed that the vote exceeded the Local’s authority because positions on major political issues are set by the IEB, since it represents and has to balance the interests of hundreds of locals and 400,000 individual members across the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. In other words, the vote in California has no effect on the national position of the UAW. A little over 2,000 members, out of 400,000, have voted to support BDS.
Much of the appeal of the BDS vote in California revolved around interpretation of the Ethical Practices Code (EPC), a key component of the UAW Constitution that codifies the Union’s intent to promote internal democracy while also attempting to balance the interests of ALL members of the Union. The key passage is the following. “Each member shall be entitled to a full share in Union self-government. Each member shall have full freedom of speech and the right to participate in the democratic decisions of the Union. Subject to reasonable rules and regulations, each member shall have the right to run for office, to nominate and to vote in free, fair and honest elections. In a democratic union, as in a democratic society, every member has certain rights but s/he also must accept certain corresponding obligations. Each member shall have the right freely to criticize the policies and personalities of Union officials; however, this does not include the right to undermine the Union as an institution; to vilify other members of the Union and its elected officials or to carry on activities with complete disregard of the rights of other members and the interests of the Union; to subvert the Union in collective bargaining or to advocate or engage in dual unionism.” The UAW definition of democracy also encompasses a commitment, in Article 2 of the Constitution, to further “the improvement of general economic and social conditions in the United States of America, Canada, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and generally in the nations of the world.” The UAW is unique in the US labor movement in that it allows appeals like the one from the member in California to go to the independent PRB, so that a neutral party decides whether the UAW has followed its own democratic procedures.
The UAW has long against weak provisions on workers’ rights to organize in trade agreements. Since President Trump had announced his intentions to renegotiate NAFTA, President Williams simply expressed that it made sense to be in the room and attempt to have influence over any reworking of the agreement. We should not, however, mistake this for “working together” or negation of the fact that the UAW’s values stand in stark contrast to Trump’s on virtually all issues. The UAW endorsed Hillary Clinton in the US national elections, and President Williams was a delegate for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic National Convention.
Yes. Building and maintaining our union is a lot of work, and we believe people should be paid for their work. Paid organizing positions are available student organizers who have already volunteered to help build the union and want to put a significant amount of time into building the union (20+ hours / week). Once we begin paying dues, we will hire our own staff to help enforce our contract. Because we are not currently paying dues, hundreds of thousands of UAW members from across the country are paying for our organizing campaign and helping us win a real voice at Harvard.
QUESTIONS ABOUT UNION MEMBERSHIP DUES
Dues provide the resources that enable fair and effective representation. For a good example of how dues enable a strong, active union, that can make real improvements, read “Dues in Action” from the academic workers union at UW . UAW membership dues are 1.44% of gross income, but we pay no dues until we have ratified our first contract. This means that we won’t pay anything until we see the benefits of having a union. Most union contracts include a provision where non-members pay a required “fair share” fee comparable to dues so that the cost of representation is shared equally.
Dues cover the day-to-day cost of having a strong union. The academic worker union at UW has a useful breakdown of how dues enable strong representation and how exactly the dues money gets allocated. Beyond the cost of negotiating and enforcing our contract, dues also cover the costs of legal representation (which won the recent NLRB case), staffing, rent, equipment, and supplies. Because most of this work is done by our local union, roughly half of our dues money is retained by our local. By being part of the UAW nationally, dues also pay for:
- Access to experts to help us negotiate a strong contract:
- Health insurance experts who can take on the University’s consultants in order to pursue the best benefits for the best price
- Researchers who can help analyze University finances.
- Experienced negotiators to help achieve our goals in bargaining, both at the bargaining table and developing an overall contract campaign
- Support for new organizing campaigns (for example, the organizing staff and legal support for the HGSU-UAW campaign is paid for by existing UAW members’ dues)
- Political action: 3% of dues money goes toward the UAW Community Action Program (CAP), which supports progressive community and political action, including legislative and other policy advocacy on issues that matter to UAW members – for example, the UAW advocates strongly for fair, comprehensive immigration reform and expanded federal support for research funding, among other issues. (NOTE: legally, dues money cannot be used for federal campaign contributions, such as the presidential race. That money comes from members’ voluntary contributions separate from, and in addition to, dues.)
Since you are one of the people making these important decisions, no one other than you can tell you what you will prioritize. We can guarantee that with a union we will negotiate as equals with the administration for what we want. Student workers at other universities have been able to use this power to win significant, specific improvements in their working conditions and benefits. We would hope to secure similar improvements. A contract will secure those improvements against unilateral changes by the administration. Currently, the administration can change policies and benefits unilaterally, without any obligation to consult those affected. For example, this last year they halved our raises while increasing the costs of our dependent healthcare. With a union, we will vote on our contract. If we are unsatisfied with a contract, we can vote against it and go back to the negotiating table to work out a better agreement.
WHO’S IN ELIGIBLE TO BE IN THE UNION
We represent all graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard who provide teaching services (i.e. Teaching Fellows, Teaching Assistants, or Course Assistants), as well as all graduate students who work as Research Assistants, regardless of funding source. Only undergraduate students at Harvard College working as research assistants are not included in the bargaining unit. This is the same bargaining unit used at Columbia University in the recent NLRB decision.
Yes. The undergraduates have been involved in our organizing for a long time because their work is very similar to the work of many graduate students working as CAs or TAs. Joining a union as an undergraduate is nothing new – there are undergraduate workers represented by unions across the country. By joining with a larger community like the graduate workers, we combine our power as a union. The undergraduate student workers at the University of Washington have fought for and won higher wages, better working conditions, and served as advocates for larger issues like affordable tuition and a more diverse faculty.
Yes! If you are teaching or working as a research assistant, you are eligible to join the union. Masters student-workers face similar concerns while working that doctoral students face. For example, Masters student workers have raised concerns around workload protections, inadequate teaching training, and a lack of a robust grievance procedure should the need arise. By joining the union, you add your voice to stop such issues, protect the benefits you like in a contract, and build power by joining a larger community here at Harvard working to create a more democratic workplace.
Absolutely! Visa requirements in no way compromise your right to belong to a union. In fact, international graduate student workers have played a central role in organizing and leading unions at more than 60 university campuses across the US, and no international graduate employee have had any complications. Due to our employment limitations, International students face particular vulnerabilities that can be best addressed through a union, such as the protections from arbitrary terminations. For this, and many other reasons, our union (the UAW) has been fighting for improved rights for international students, including unlimited employment and a path to citizenship. Having a union will give international students a political voice especially in issues that affect us most.
You have seen firsthand both the challenges we face as student workers. The question to ask yourself is: “If I had a voice in how things are run here, could I make it better?” If the answer is yes, then supporting a union will give the future student employees here at Harvard that exact opportunity. Your support can ensure we can improve our working conditions while protecting what we like. We know that changes like the recent halving of our raises and increases in our dependent premium would have been done differently if we had a union, and understand that is why we cannot afford to wait.
HOW WILL HGSU-UAW DEMOCRACY WORK?
- We have elected our Bargaining Committee which is meeting with university representatives to negotiate in pursuit of our bargaining goals;
- Our committee will negotiate a tentative agreement with the University;
- RAs and TAs will vote whether to ratify it as our first contract;
- After the contract is ratified, the membership will elect representatives who help run the Union and help members with any problems they have in the workplace
In our first contract vote, student workers in the bargaining unit who have signed union authorization cards will be eligible. RAs and TAs who have not previously signed up may do so at the time of the vote at no cost.
The UAW has an international constitution, which is democratically amended every four years at a constitutional convention. This constitution outlines the basic democratic structure of the union. In addition, once our union is recognized, we will create a voluntary committee to take responsibility to drafting our local’s bylaws–the internal rules and procedures that govern the operation of our local. Once completed, members of the local will have the opportunity to vote to ratify the bylaws or send them back for changes. Modifications to the bylaws can always be made by a membership vote.
All unions have by-laws which lay out how the union is governed. Once our union is recognized, we will create a voluntary Bylaws committee to take responsibility to drafting our bylaws. Once completed, the members of the local will have the opportunity to vote to accept the bylaws, also called ratifying them, or send them back for changes. Modifications to the bylaws, once ratified, can be made by membership vote.
Like in any democratic organization, disagreements sometimes happen within the UAW. In the late 1990s, there were some internal disputes at UMass and at UC Santa Barbara. Fortunately, the UAW has democratic structures in place to address such disagreements and to ensure the rights of all members. In 2004, as the anti-union campaign raised questions about these events in the lead-up to a unionization vote at the University of Washington, members from UMass and UCSB addressed the situation. You can read their comments below. February 29, 2004 “I am a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the President of UAW Local 2322, the union that represents graduate teaching and research assistants at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Our union was recognized in 1991 and has bargained six contracts since that time. We have been able to negotiate dramatic improvements for our members on wages, healthcare, childcare, and other issues. As you move closer to your election you may hear negative things about the UAW at UMass. There were problems in the local in the past. People in the local couldn’t resolve their disputes, and some democratic practices were not being followed. But the UAW, the larger organization that we are part of, didn’t let that situation disintegrate. At the request of members of our local, a UAW staff member assisted us in getting things back on track by allowing our democratically elected leadership to take charge. At the time I was skeptical of the role that the UAW staff might play, but I have to say that it was the best thing for the local. The future of Local 2322 is bright. We have had a number of great accomplishments recently – a new contract and organizing victories for more campus workers. I want to encourage you to vote yes in your election and look forward to welcoming you into the UAW.” James A.W. Shaw President Local 2322 United Auto Workers Northampton, MA
February 28, 2004 “We are the current elected UC Santa Barbara leadership of UAW Local 2865. We urge the ASEs at University of Washington to vote yes for GSEAC/UAW in your upcoming election. We are proud to be members of the UAW. Like most democratic organizations, we have had some internal disagreements. In the late 1990’s a small group at our campus disagreed over bargaining goals and strategies. The group, including some of the elected bargaining team members, wanted to have the right to strike over grievances, in addition to the remedy of binding arbitration, in the contract. This was not a position supported by the Santa Barbara membership in bargaining surveys or organizing contacts, nor by the rest of the elected bargaining teams and members at UC’s seven other campuses. The Santa Barbara bargaining team members resigned over this disagreement. The contract was subsequently ratified by all UC campuses, including Santa Barbara. Since then, we and elected leadership at the other seven UC campuses have negotiated a second contract, also ratified by members at all campuses.” Signed, Brian Campbell, UCSB Campus Unit Chair, UAW Local 2865, Geological Sciences Nina Kilham, UCSB Campus Recording Secretary, UAW Local 2865, Geography Susie Keller, UCSB Campus Head Steward, UAW Local 2865, English
