This session, we emphasized the urgent needs of our non-citizen workers. 

Several student workers powerfully testified as to what their lives look like right now:they are under constant threat of being abducted from their labs, their classrooms, and their homes; if they travel, they are worried about being unable to finish their research they came to this country to do; and many are afraid of returning home to countries which are hostile to their research. We encourage you to read some of their testimonies here. Our community’s need for legal counsel is immediate and vital, but also expensive, ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars for each student. 

Four years ago, our contract bargaining won us 100k/year that was slated to fund student workers for work-related legal expenses, such as the current immigration threats we are facing. Harvard has failed to properly release these funds to HGSU, which has left us unable to access nearly 400k that could help protect non-citizen students right now. HGSU has made every effort to stretch the emergency fund and other benefit pools to assist student workers, but our existing funds are insufficient to meet escalating need for legal representation.

We started the session with a simple request that we’ve been making for weeks: Harvard should make these promised funds accessible for our non-citizen workers, both now and for future contract iterations.

Harvard’s lead negotiator accused us of not being “thankful” for Harvard’s legal efforts against Trump, accusing one of our bargaining members of “whitewashing”(?), and began yelling at our team to a point that a University provost had to step in and intervene. Their lead negotiator asked if Harvard would get any appreciation for all its efforts at protecting the institution against Trump. The lead negotiator also refused to further engage with the legal defense fund topic, claiming it was “not relevant” to the current contract negotiations.

This attack was not only disrespectful, but completely missed our expressed concerns. Our non-citizen workers urgently need money to pay for legal bills and guidance, and Harvard refuses to make these contractually obligated funds accessible. We recognize that the university is engaging the US administration in court, but if Harvard is truly “the one fighting for [us] right now” as they claimed at the table, then we need immediate and timely material support and a clear commitment from Harvard to protect our legal statuses as it pertains to our work and livelihood. The first step is to release our legal funds now!! 

We then presented our proposal for Article 13: Non-Citizen Rights and Work Authorization. In it, we included asks for comprehensive legal assistance in the event of detention or federal immigration enforcement; expanded leave provisions and remote work provisions in the case of any immigration-related proceedings; and protections against federal presence on campus or requests for records. As we began to present the testimonies relevant to these changes, Harvard cut us off and demanded we proceed to another article. We, however, insisted on presenting four powerful testimonies from the non-citizen student worker community. 

Finally, we presented our proposal for Article 18: Union Access and Rights, which aims to secure space, time, and finances for administrative aspects of the union. We proposed updates to the information that the Union receives about student workers and consistent Union representation in student worker orientations. We asked for dedicated, ADA-compliant Union workspaces across the Harvard campus. We also requested a fixed number of paid positions for student workers who dedicate job-equivalent hours to leading and organizing the union, such as the HGSU executive board members who currently volunteer their time uncompensated. 

We return to the bargaining table next Thursday, June 12 (1-4pm) to present more articles and continue conversations about these pressing issues. Nothing is won at the table alone – if we are to win anything, we need you! Here’s how you can help:

1. Help us fight for access to the legal fund! Send this attached template email to your PI/supervisors/concerned faculty, and share with your cohort too. 
2. RSVP to be part of our bargaining team or caucus room for our session next Thursday, in-person or on Zoom!
3. Keep your colleagues/peers/friends/enemies informed! Reading emails is hard… we need YOU to bring this information to life! 
4. As always, check out and share our Bargaining Portal with all updates and proposed articles.

TLDR: Harvard once again refused Zoom bargaining, and they didn’t fully address our questions on non-citizen protections and more recent funding cuts. Harvard asked us extensive procedural questions about the grievance process and appointment letters, and we proposed an article on workload and fair pay for teaching. 

HGSU brought 45+ bargaining team members to the bargaining session last Thursday. Seeing the packed room, Harvard immediately asserted their legal right to request a list of that day’s bargaining team, which we provided. We also reminded the University that our Bargaining Committee reserves the right to determine our bargaining team as we see fit. Thank you so much to everyone who joined our bargaining team and for those in the caucus room!

We began the session by requesting a Zoom option for accessibility, as many student workers are out of town during the summer. Harvard once again denied this request. We will organize around this issue during our Contract Action Team meetings every Thursday at 6PM on Zoom. In the meantime, we are still seeking members to contribute to our in-person bargaining efforts – RSVP here for our next session on Thurs, June 5th, or on Zoom!

We followed up on questions regarding non-citizen protections and legal funds for student workers. We raised our concerns about Harvard’s continued resistance to properly administering the legal defense fund we won in the last contract, and we discussed how understaffing at the HRI has limited student access to legal services. Harvard also said they weren’t sure how graduate student positions would be affected as a result of funding cuts, but that they would get back to us when they knew more. With recent federal funding cuts impacting huge swaths of our university, we need Harvard to commit to student worker protections at the bargaining table!

Harvard asked our team extensive procedural questions regarding our proposals for Article 6: Grievance & Arbitration, and 3: Appointment Letters. For Grievance & Arbitration, we emphasized the importance of needing longer timelines for student workers to file a grievance. The University claimed these extended timelines wouldn’t be necessary since it wasn’t “standard” for other unions (despite there being other examples of extended timelines), and expressed concern that students could forget details about their workplace issue complaints. We pushed back on these claims and emphasized the need for timely responses from Harvard on requested information, to which Harvard responded it would be a challenge to commit to certain timelines or provide information on why some workplace issues are denied. For Appointment Letters, Harvard expressed confusion about the (lack of) information that student workers receive about tax withholding. When asked about sending out timely appointment letters with basic information like department/program, tax rate, and funding source, Harvard claimed that it would be “cumbersome and onerous” to do so, and blamed individual departments or programs for falling behind. 

We still await any article counter-proposals from Harvard. 

Finally, we also proposed Article 16: Workload. Right now, there is a pervasive issue where some students teach without appropriate pay, despite performing the same job/labor as their paid peers. Our goal is to ensure that all student workers who are teaching are given appropriate job assignments and matching pay! If you have experience with unpaid teaching and can help us understand the issue (particularly in the sciences/DMS), please reach out to [email protected]! As always, please see our full proposal texts in the Bargaining Portal.

We invite you to attend our next bargaining session on Thursday 6/5 at 1-4PM – RSVP here in-person or on Zoom to join us in our caucus (strategizing room) or as part of our bargaining team! It’s important to have rank and file members (like you!) at bargaining to discuss strategy and hear direct experiences from student workers related to our contract. Keep an eye out for a post-bargaining debrief social as well.

TLDR: We proposed three articles on employment security, non-discrimination and harassment, and academic retaliation. We didn’t receive any answers about Harvard’s plans to protect student workers in light of recent funding cuts and threats to non-citizens.

Check out our new(ish) Bargaining Portal with updates! Our next session is next Thursday, May 15th – all members are invited to the post-bargaining debrief and our caucus room.

HGSU again brought a full bargaining team with our core bargaining committee and student workers from across the University – see last bullet point below to get involved with our next bargaining session! We also enjoyed the virtual presence of members in our HGSU-only caucus room, which all members are invited to attend! In the words of a G3 in Liberal Arts, “It was really nice to be in the caucus room because you can freely ask questions [about bargaining], follow along on notes, and hang out with staff.”

Unfortunately, Harvard had zero immediate answers to our questions about student worker funding security in the face of funding cuts and university restructurings, the nature of information they shared with DHS in order to remain SEVP-compliant, or about ICE presence on campus. Non-citizen student workers and those otherwise concerned about the stability of their employment and study at Harvard deserve better!

Our bargaining team presented three article proposals: Article 4: Employment Security, Article 7: Non-Discrimination, Harassment, Abuse and Intimidation, and Article 8: Academic Retaliation. Our goal is to secure better protections and rights for workers across a variety of appointments, a “real recourse” approach to issues of harassment, discrimination, abuse, or intimidation by providing choice, clarity and care, and improved protections against academic retaliation. For the full articles, see our new Bargaining Portal which has a tracker for each article, and will also be updated with press releases with quotes and more details.

Harvard pushed back against our demands for real recourse in Article 7 by asserting that ~10% is a “negligible” dismissal rate for complaints in the past few years. The University also did not acknowledge how existing processes are highly time-restricted and often lead to arbitrary complaint dismissals. We will continue to advocate for improved protections and fair due process for all student workers in our bargaining sessions with Harvard, and we will continue to push for transparent and accessible bargaining via Zoom.

TLDR: We brought article proposals on appointment letters, grievance & arbitration, and workspace/materials & remote work. Harvard passed us a proposal on intellectual property. Check out our new Bargaining Portal with all updates on bargaining! We will continue to push for transparent Zoom bargaining.

Despite proceeding without ground rules, we had a productive bargaining session with Harvard last Thursday, 4/10. HGSU brought a full bargaining team with our core bargaining committee and student workers from across the University – see next paragraph to get involved with our next bargaining session! We presented three article proposals: Articles 3 (Appointment Letter), 6 (Grievance and Arbitration), and 15 (Workspace, Remote Work, and Materials). Harvard’s Bargaining Team passed us a proposal on Article 9 (Intellectual Property, Scholarly, and Research Misconduct). Each team had the opportunity to ask clarifying questions regarding the changes made in the articles. For the full articles, see our new Bargaining Portal (here!) which has a tracker for each article, and will also be updated with press releases with quotes and more details.

Our next bargaining session is in three weeks on Thursday, May 1st, 1-4PM. Keep an eye out for details about the caucus room and post-bargaining debriefs. We encourage you to email [email protected], reach us at #ask-bargaining on Slack, or join our WhatsApp group for bargaining announcements if you are interested in learning about or contributing to our contact bargaining process, both at the table and with broader organizing.

TLDR: Harvard refused to move on open bargaining and denied protections from ICE/DHS for bargaining participants. We will move on by bargaining without ground rules. 

In our second bargaining session with Harvard yesterday (Friday 3/28), we aimed to get movement on two core issues for HGSU members: open bargaining, to ensure negotiations are observable to all members, and enforceable protections against ICE/DHS for anyone who attends sessions.

Despite delivering our petition for open bargaining with over 1200 signatures and direct quotes from student workers and community members, Harvard again rejected all of our proposed ground rules. We have truly tried to compromise towards progress with Harvard on this issue. After Harvard canceled our first bargaining session over concerns that members would attend, we crafted and proposed two new sets of ground rules that clarified norms for observers to assuage Harvard’s fear of “disruption”. Today, we offered them yet another compromise, proposing that bargaining observers would only be present on a muted Zoom webinar. In response to every proposal we made, Harvard refused to meaningfully engage by axing out all of our language around transparent bargaining. In the session yesterday, the University made it clear that they had a problem specifically with “our unit” being able to observe negotiations. Why does Harvard not want HGSU members to see negotiations first hand?

Harvard also refused our request to protect student workers against ICE and other federal agents during bargaining sessions. Given the recent detainments and deportations of student workers at universities across the US and in our community, we asked Harvard to (1) notify HGSU if the University was informed of ICE presence and (2) to enforce key-card access to limit potential ICE entry during bargaining sessions. Harvard not only rejected these two items in ground rules, they also actively refused to even verbally agree with any of these simple actions. When one of our committee members tried to explain the importance of having a safe bargaining room for our bargaining committee, members providing testimonials, and members writ large, the University’s lead negotiator cut them off, saying: “You’ve talked an awful lot.” They directed us to Harvard’s Office for General Counsel guidelines, which don’t provide any material protection against detainment or deportation, and said: “That policy is our policy.” We are appalled by the University’s active negligence and denial of safety during bargaining sessions. Why is Harvard unwilling to do so little as lock a door to make the bargaining room safer for student workers?

Moving forward, we will be bargaining without ground rules until Harvard is willing to meaningfully address our proposals for these key issues of bargaining transparency and safety. We will have updates about what this looks like for you shortly.

TLDR: The University rejected our proposals for open bargaining, safety/accessibility, and reasonable accommodations.

Last Friday, we had our first bargaining session with Harvard. Two weeks after we sent them our proposed ground rules to govern negotiations, the University rejected our proposals, which included a plan for open bargaining (both in-person and on Zoom), and included a request for protections from ICE and other law enforcement agencies during bargaining. They did accept one specific proposed disability accommodation needed for our bargaining committee to fully participate in in-person negotiations.

HGSU members have been collectively advocating for open bargaining, which allows union members to silently observe negotiation sessions that directly impact our rights and working conditions. During our session, the University claimed that the presence of observers would unfairly “pressure them”, and that the open bargaining in 2021 led to a “chilling effect” on some of the Harvard legal team’s members. We took those concerns seriously and asked them repeatedly to clarify them. But they refused to provide details or further negotiate any specific items; they also refused to offer a counterproposal that would meet their needs. Why does Harvard not want HGSU membership to see the bargaining process firsthand?

To address these concerns in good faith, we drafted and sent the University a new counter-proposal within an hour that reiterated the position we held coming into the session, including delineating norms around open and accessible bargaining and demanding protections from law enforcement threats during negotiations.

Our next bargaining session is in 2 weeks — the ball is now in Harvard’s court to articulate what concrete concerns they have about open bargaining.

What’s next? We want Harvard to recognize this demand from HGSU members and community supporters about the need for transparency around our contract bargaining process. We welcome proposals from rank and file members about how we can move the university on open bargaining. We emphasized members wouldn’t be happy to hear that Harvard wants us to compromise on our need for open bargaining – so how should we make that clear to them?