TL;DR: OUR DEMANDS FOR A LIVING WAGE & BENEFITS TO MATCH JUST DROPPED  – all of our proposed contract articles are now on the table, including language and economic demands. 

The Rundown (cause we’re all busy & underpaid):

• On Feb 9, We Put Forward:

  • Wages YOU can live on 

    • $55k base wage, plus yearly cost-of-living increases, and parity across workers 

  • Benefits YOU can access 

    • Full dental!!

    • Expanded funds for childcare, healthcare, emergencies, legal support, and for our non-citizen workers 

    • A new benefit structure that expands eligibility and ensures accessibility

  • Protections YOU can rely on

    • A grievance process that actually works toward real recourse if you face harassment, discrimination, or abuse in the workplace

    • Funding to support workers who transition out of abusive workplaces

    • Accessible campus transit options for workers with disabilities

    • Protections for non-citizens workers in their workplaces

A real living wage that increases with inflation and benefits we need to survive are now officially on the table—winning them will take collective pressure from all of us, up to and including a strike, if necessary. 

——

Buckle up, folks. We’ve got a lot to update you on.  

At our February 9 session, we showed up with a major package of proposals covering pay, healthcare, benefits, and basic economic security. Together, these proposals are about stopping Harvard from building its success on low pay, unstable benefits, and the expectation that student workers will just “figure it out.” 

These proposals make it clear: Our basic needs are not optional. 

Now, it’s on management to respond to our demands for:

• a living wage that is on par with what peer institutions pay and increases annually to make sure inflation doesn’t leave us with a pay cut every year 
• increased benefit funds for childcare, healthcare, emergencies, non-citizen workers and full dental! 
• protections against ICE and retaliation for our non-citizen workers 
• material support for our disabled workers, incl. paid family/medical leave, health insurance while on leaves, and $$ for accessible transit options 
• real recourse against harassment, discrimination, bullying and retaliation through a process not entirely controlled by Harvard + funding to transition out of abusive lab workspaces
• a more fair and equitably structured union representation for all workers (a fair-share fee)
• academic freedom rights & protections  
• along with all the other proposals we’ve been negotiating about for the past year.  

Let’s talk shop. We’ve now put three major categories of demands on the table: real raises, expanded benefits, and workplace justice for survivors, non-citizens, and disabled workers. Here’s what that means. 

COMPENSATION – Real Raises, Not Inflation Pay Cuts

We Demand a Living Wage with our Compensation Proposal

On February 9, we presented our compensation proposal to lock in real raises and end Harvard’s pay games. The proposal establishes a $55,000 base rate, raises hourly pay to $25/hour, and guarantees automatic annual increases of 5% OR inflation adjusted wages—whichever is higher for all student workers. 

After HGSU’s 2021 Living Wage campaign, the stipend rose to ~$50K—but that is only $40K in 2021 dollars. In real terms, we’ve taken a pay cut. Our economic plan stops “raises” from turning into pay cuts by making sure our wages actually keep up with the rising costs of rent, groceries, and life in Boston—not falling further behind every year. 

We’re also fighting to make sure TFs are being paid the same as RAs – most TFs after the G4 year in the Humanities & Social Sciences only make $26,000 for teaching the standard teaching load. That qualifies them for food stamps in MA. Almost no other peer institutions use the unnecessarily complicated classification system that Harvard exploits to treat TFs like adjuncts, paid by the section, instead of like regular salaried workers. Our proposal closes loopholes Harvard has used to quietly underpay us and turns “raises” into real wage growth

.

BENEFITS – Demanding What We Need to Survive & Thrive at Harvard

We’re proposing fully-funded dental coverage—along with expanded benefit funds for our workers’ childcare, healthcare, legal expenses, and emergencies —because our current benefits don’t match the realities of our lives. We are further proposing expanding our non-citizen worker assistance fund to match the realities of the political moment. This and our legal expense fund matter for immigration, housing, tax, and workplace issues that workers currently face alone. 

Student workers are delaying care, paying out of pocket, going into debt for legal or immigration costs, and scrambling when emergencies hit, all while Harvard relies on our labor to function. 

Overall, our proposal would expand our benefits funds from 2.75 million to 3.6 million in funds & expands eligibility and accessibility of our benefits funds, such as fixing gaps that currently lock out hourly workers and making salaried workers eligible for the entire fiscal year in which they worked. 

These funds aren’t “extras”—they’re protections that make it possible for us to stay healthy, care for our families, defend our rights, and get through crises without dropping out or taking on unmanageable debt. Harvard can afford these proposed student-worker benefits; the real question is whether they’re willing to stop pushing risk and instability onto us.

WORKPLACE JUSTICE – For Survivors, Non-Citizens, & Workers with Disabilities

One of the big themes of this contract is fighting to make our workplaces more just, safe and equitable for all workers. We have a lot of proposals on the table, fighting to achieve this in different ways: safety for non-citizens and disabled workers, justice for survivors of discrimination, harassment, bullying or other abuse, and equity throughout our workplaces by having a union structure that’s fair and equitable. Here’s what we talked about on Feb 9:

Transitional Support – Funding to Support RAs to Transition out of Unsafe Work Environments

We’re proposing a new Transitional Support Program to ensure RAs can leave unsafe, abusive, or broken advising relationships without losing pay or benefits. The program provides up to six months of guaranteed funding, tuition coverage, healthcare, and full benefits, with support starting quickly. This gives RAs real freedom to prioritize their safety, dignity, and academic future instead of being trapped by funding dependence. Peer institutions already have these programs – we’ve based our model on a similar system at MIT – it’s time Harvard stepped up and protected our workers. 

Accessible Transit for Workers with Disability Accommodations that Actually Works

We’re proposing guaranteed, reliable accessible transportation for student workers approved for disability accommodations through the Daytime Van Service. This proposal expands access to both daytime and evening vans across all Harvard campuses and adds ride-share coverage when van wait times exceed 30 minutes, so workers with disabilities aren’t stranded or forced to miss work. Accessible transit shouldn’t depend on luck or long waits—this proposal makes getting to work safe, timely, and predictable.

Justice for survivors of harassment, discrimination, bullying or abuse

We also reasserted our proposal for better harassment and discrimination protections. Our data indicates that 1 in 5 student workers experience harassment, discrimination, or bullying in their workplace. We’re demanding that student workers have access to the union grievance process as one way to seek redress for harassment, discrimination, bullying or abuse – a standard protection across graduate union contracts. Harvard has thus far responded not only by rejecting this proposal, but by taking away protections we had in our last contract, like the right to union representation in meetings, so that student workers’ only means of recourse are totally controlled by Harvard. 

When Harvard investigates itself we know student workers don’t get the justice they deserve. When student workers have access to union grievances they have better outcomes because they have access to more care and supportive measures, they have clearer processes, and more choice about which pathways to recourse are best for them. For more of what we want and why, check out our real recourse zine here.

The Rundown (bc we’re all busy & underpaid):

• • On Feb 9, We Put Forward:
    • Wages YOU can live on 
      • $55k base wage, plus yearly cost-of-living increases, and parity across workers 
    • Benefits YOU can access 
      • Full dental!!
      • Expanded funds for childcare, healthcare, emergencies, legal support, and for our non-citizen workers 
      • A new benefit structure that expands eligibility and ensures accessibility

• Protections YOU can rely on

• A grievance process that actually works toward real recourse if you face harassment, discrimination, or abuse in the workplace

• • • Funding to support workers who transition out of abusive workplaces
    • Accessible campus transit options for workers with disabilities
    • Protections for non-citizens workers in their workplaces

Our collective power is what turns these proposals into a real contract. 

Our plan: Remind Harvard that this school only works because we do. We’ve passed proposals back and forth for nearly a year now, with little to no progress on our core issues. It’s time to organize escalating action, up to and including a strike, if necessary. 

How do we pull this off? 

Many of our organizers have been thinking about what steps we can take to win, including the possibility of striking, if necessary. A strike is not something we take lightly, and we will democratically decide if, when, for how long, and over what we would strike. But if the University fails to make progress on our proposals, then this is an option we need to take seriously. 

—

So what do we need you to do right now? Two things:

1. Attend our Strike School (happening next Tuesday & Wednesday, RSVP here) where we will talk through why we might need to strike, what a strike will look like, and answer any and all questions you might have. If you have any questions before that, please reach out to your turf stewards. A strike could not happen with only a handful of us, so bring your friends and coworkers! 
2. Submit a testimonial about your working conditions, being a non-citizen, being a disabled or minoritized worker, harassment/discrimination/bullying/retaliation, or the importance of academic freedom, family and medical leave protections, or well-rounded benefits. As much as possible, we need to share our stories with each other and to the University so we know the humans behind the proposals we put across. 

Now is the moment to engage like a living wage depends on it – because it does. It’s on us to organize and show management that we’re united and ready to win.

Next Bargaining Session: March 10, 2026.

With Solidarity,

Your HGSU Bargaining Committee 

In our last negotiation session, we made real progress and showed what happens when we bargain with an organized membership behind us.

We TA’d Workspace (Article 15) — our first Tentative Agreement of this bargaining cycle!

A tentative agreement (TA) means we and the University agreed to contract language at the table. It’s not final until members ratify the full contract — but it locks in progress and builds momentum.

What we won: the University agreed to provide available private space that is reasonably close to the workplace for Student-Workers to hold office hours, supervisor meetings, etc.

At the table, we clarified what “reasonable” means: generally under a 10-minute walk and generally on the same campus. This is a real accessibility win and a basic dignity-at-work standard. No more office-hours in cafés and public spaces! The hallway era is over. We’re tired of hunting around for rooms to take work-related calls in private. Graduate workers deserve private space to do our jobs; we won concrete protections that make our day-to-day work possible.

The University is ghosting us on Non-Citizen protections; 242 days and counting…

We pressed the University again after they’ve left us on read since June (over 8 months!) without a counter to our proposal while workers face real, escalating risks. They admit they’ve been discussing Article 13 behind closed doors, but we still have nothing in writing. 

We walked them through our proposal again and made it clear: non-citizen and international workers need enforceable protections now, not vague promises later. “Trust us, bro” won’t cut it. 

Health & Safety: We put another counter on the table

We’ve proposed stronger, enforceable protections — including clearer timelines for disability accommodations and safer approaches to “wellness checks” that don’t default to cops and armed responses.

Their response was the usual: “that’ll be difficult.” 

Our answer: keeping workers safe is not optional.

Appointment Letters: Management dodges accountability on late pay & broken promises

The University passed a counter on employment appointment letters (Article 3) that adds a line about pay being “taxable income,” but doesn’t fix the real problem: late appointment letters and late pay. 

The University routinely sends appointment letters late or promises jobs that don’t materialize — and workers pay the price through delayed pay and instability. We made it clear: management mistakes shouldn’t cancel paychecks, and promised appointments must come with job security. 

Late pay and broken appointment promises are systemic, not isolated. We submitted an RFI (Request for Information) to the University in August of 2025 to get hard data on how many of our workers face these issues. Though the University is legally required to respond to RFIs, they’re ghosting us instead.

Grievance & Arbitration: We moved — they’re resisting anti-retaliation protections

The Union’s counter made movement on grievance timelines to keep negotiations moving; we’ve adjusted down to 45 business days, which is still longer than our last contract. We’re still pushing for stronger, practical protections against retaliation when workers file grievances — and the University is resisting.

The Tea: We got our first TA because workers stayed organized. Now we need that same energy to win on non-citizen protections, health and safety, and stopping rollbacks to existing rights.

Our wins come from worker pressure — staying organized is how we keep moving them.

TL;DR: We’re cooking, chat:

• Big W: We won our first TA, and it delivers a real, material improvement: private workspace for our workers, understood as generally under a 10-minute walk and on the same campus.
• Big yikes: The University is still ghosting us on non-citizen protections — it’s been OVER 8 MONTHS with no counter.
• Red flag behavior: They’re dragging their feet on health & safety and trying to weaken appointment letter protections that ensure our workers have timely, secure appointments.

The more we organize, the more we win. This is the formula.

Stay plugged in. Talk to your coworkers. Keep showing up.

Don’t doomscroll, organize.

Last Thursday (12/04) at bargaining, we received several counters from the University on our proposed articles concerning employment letters, access to workspace on campus, and changes to grievance and arbitration, the process by which we address contract violations and workplace disputes. 

We continue to push the University to provide solutions for student workers whose payments have been delayed because of long processing times for employment appointments. Timely appointment letters ensure student workers receive their paychecks on time.

We were glad to see the University adopt our proposal guaranteeing student workers access to private space for meetings related to their teaching and research responsibilities. Still, we are seeking clearer language to ensure that these spaces are truly accessible—not located across campus—and that student workers know how to reserve them in advance through an online or administrative booking system.

The University continues to deny our request for a more reasonable timeline to file a formal grievance. Our proposal of 80 business days was cut down to just 35. Too often, workers do not realize their rights have been violated until weeks later, and everyone deserves ample time to understand their options and pursue a remedy. The University also continues to deny codification of basic privacy protections for student workers who go through our grievance process. This is essential to provide student workers peace of mind that their grievances are kept as confidential as possible and mitigate concerns of retaliation. 

Next, we had a productive conversation on our proposals to strengthen protections for student workers experiencing discrimination, harassment, or bullying. We are asking the University to provide multiple, flexible options for seeking redress: filing a grievance through the union, using the University’s internal process, or pursuing both—either simultaneously or sequentially. This ensures that student workers can choose the pathway that best fits the circumstances of their case. The University, however, remains insistent on limiting workers to only one process – their internal process – which is a one-size-fits-all approach that does not reflect the complexities these situations often involve and can change at any point with no input from us.

We are making slow but steady progress toward our next contract. While we appreciate that the University is engaging more directly with some of our proposals, we are still waiting on counters for 11 of 16 articles currently in negotiation, including those on non-citizen worker rights, academic freedom, holidays, leaves, and more.

Help us show Harvard why these proposals matter. Submit your story here.

To get more involved in the campaign for our new contract, please email [email protected]! 

This past Friday’s bargaining session, we had some productive conversations with the University, especially related to academic retaliation, the horrors of booking a room, and the importance of an appropriate workspace. The University even returned to us with a small (but significant!) change…but the ball is back in their court. 

After receiving 12 rejections in early November, the bargaining committee went straight to work. On Friday, the committee returned ten counters to the University. The membership-approved counters continue to push the University to accept: 

• Security pay for all teaching assignments beyond the “guaranteed” teaching offered in fellowship packages

• Student workers’ right to inquire into their funding source

• Health care during leaves of absence

• Academic freedom on matters relevant to the subject and purpose of their appointment

• Paid vacation days for all workers, accrued by month 

& more…

The University was surprised with our turnaround, and acknowledged that they had a lot of work to do by our next session on December 4th. They did manage to give us one more counter, a follow up to the rejection we received for Article 7, on Non-Discrimination, Harassment, and Abuse or Intimidation: the new inclusion of the phrase “or retaliation” sprinkled around their proposed article, a small but optimistic signal that they know we cannot rely on the “Harvard ethos” to protect us from harassment or retaliation…  Retaliation, and more specifically academic retaliation is a real feature of Harvard’s culture of abuse towards student workers, and as Harvard’s dirty laundry gets aired out on the national stage, the University is beginning to hear us.

Help us show Harvard why these proposals matter. Submit your story here.

To get more involved in the campaign for our new contract, please email [email protected]! 

Last Friday at bargaining, we sat down with Harvard’s Chief Financial Officer for an overview of the University’s finances. What we learned was telling: Harvard’s top priority is the long-term growth of its $56.9 billion endowment. 

Despite exceeding benchmark returns this year with an 11.9% gain on the endowment, the University made it clear that it has no plans to draw from its record-breaking investments to offset hiring freezes, layoffs, and stagnant wages for the workers who make Harvard run. The language of long-termism masks a preference for capital preservation over labor and education.

When we asked about Harvard’s decision to slash graduate admissions for the next two years, the University told us that this was primarily an “academic decision” and refused to explain further. Apparently, the University believes that reducing the number of graduate student workers who do the teaching and research that sustain Harvard in the long run somehow benefits its “academic” mission. 

Next, Harvard unilaterally rejected 12 of our proposed contract articles, with little to no explanation other than the tired refrain that our current contract is “good enough” and our demands for basic workplace rights are too “challenging.”

What did Harvard reject? Basic workplace rights like:

• Paid family and medical leave for up to 12 weeks 
• Access to healthcare during leaves, so no one loses coverage in a crisis
• More than one personal day off per semester
• Full compensation for RAs and TFs whose appointments are cancelled last minute
• Real recourse for harassment, discrimination, bullying, and academic retaliation
• Any academic freedom protections to speak without fear in the classroom 

There’s nothing radical about our proposals. They’re basic rights that graduate student workers at peer institutions already have. 

Help us show Harvard why these proposals matter. Submit your story here. 

To get more involved in the campaign for our new contract, please email [email protected]!

Last Thursday (10/23) at bargaining, we reminded the University that the ball is in their court. There are 16 articles awaiting their response on the table, many of which have gone unaddressed for months.

The University invited Kate Upatham, the Senior Director of Harvard’s Disability Resources, to give an overview of Harvard’s accommodations process. When we asked about the timing of student workers’ accommodation requests and data on denied requests or informal resolutions, we were told the University does not have these statistics readily available despite many disabled workers expressing strong concerns with the outcomes of this process. We emphasized that meaningful transparency is impossible without access to this information. 

We then presented our counterproposal on grievance and arbitration, the process for handling contract violations.  We’re calling to extend the grievance filing timeline to roughly one semester so student workers have ample time to navigate the process fairly. The timeline should be realistic given student workers’ busy work schedules and personal lives. Arbitrary timelines shouldn’t prevent student workers from filing grievances over workload, pay, or benefits. Harvard offered only 5 extra days (bringing the total to 35) and refused to codify in writing any commitment to accepting late grievances, claiming that they could grant extensions on a case-by-case basis through “mutual agreement.”

With no counterproposals from the University on the 16 open articles, Harvard instead asked questions about leaves and holidays. We pushed for guarantees that student workers on leave retain their student status, access to campus resources, and health insurance–basic protections that peer universities like Brown and Yale already provide. Why has Harvard been unable to do the same? Harvard rejected our idea of ungraded, “placeholder” credits that would let workers on leave maintain enrollment, implying that it would “reward” those not making academic progress. Student workers on leave of absence due to a medical or mental health emergency lose their health insurance when they need it most – and it’s unconscionable that Harvard wants this to continue. 

We also demanded that TFs receive vacation time, proposing just one vacation day per month. The University dismissed this, implying TFs’ schedules are already “flexible” enough.

Once again, Harvard stalled progress by dodging engagement on our proposals. After bargaining, 100+ student workers rallied alongside HAW, HUCTW, and 32BJ, showing that we’re united, organized, and ready to fight until we win a contract with strong, enforceable protections! But we need to keep the momentum going: please email [email protected] if you would like to get more involved in the campaign for our new contract.

At bargaining last Thursday (09/25), we pressed Harvard on our proposals and had a productive conversation across several proposed contract articles.

The University opened with clarifying questions on grievance and arbitration, the process for handling contract violations. We emphasized the need to extend the grievance filing timeline from 30 to 90 business days (the equivalent of a semester) from the date of the alleged contract violation, so that student workers aren’t forced into rushed decisions and have the time to navigate the grievance process fairly. Too often, workers don’t realize their rights have been violated until weeks later, and everyone should have ample time to consider their options.

We also pushed for stronger protections for privacy and against retaliation. Student workers shouldn’t be punished for bringing forward workplace issues. While Harvard expressed openness to better training for administrators about the impacts of retaliation, they dismissed our proposed definition of retaliation as “too broad” and “outside their control” to address in policy. Harvard claims that the University’s “ethos” is already non-retaliatory while refusing to put clear protections into policy or point to a working definition of retaliation in our current contract.

On union security, we introduced a counter-proposal for agency-shop, ensuring that everyone who benefits from our contract contributes through dues or a fair-share fee. A stronger, more equitable union can respond quickly and effectively to student workers’ needs — a win for both workers and the University.

The University also asked several questions about workload, workspace and materials, leaves, and health and safety. We underscored that all student workers need:

• Timely and reasonable accommodations for student workers with disabilities
• Continued access to healthcare during leaves, so no one loses coverage in a crisis, including during medical leave—and non-citizen workers aren’t left without visas
• Safe workplaces free from violence, including protection from involuntary police entry into non-public spaces where student workers live and work 
• Dedicated desk space on campus to do their jobs

This was a productive step forward — now we need Harvard to turn discussion into real protections in our contract. We’ve brought 16 articles to the table, and so far have only received 6 counterproposals in return. The ball is in Harvard’s court.

At bargaining last Thursday (9/11), Harvard once again showed how unwilling they are to engage meaningfully with student workers’ concerns.

Harvard invited Nicole Merhill, the Director of the newly-formed CSNDR, to outline the University’s existing Title IX policies and procedures. We hoped this would open the door to real discussion of our proposals for stronger protections against harassment and discrimination (as decades of Harvard’s mistreatment have necessitated) — including access to grievability for discrimination and harassment cases and robust non-retaliation measures. Instead, Harvard dodged our questions and refused to engage with their own objections to our proposals, preventing us from working towards a collaborative agreement. This leaves workers with no real recourse to seek justice beyond Harvard’s internal system, where the University controls the process from start to finish.

We also continued pressing for employment security and academic retaliation protections. Our proposals are simple: teaching fellows should receive full pay if their sections are canceled and at least two weeks’ notice if that happens. And no graduate worker should face retaliation from faculty mentors or advisors in their recommendation letters, professional opportunities, or academic endeavors. Harvard’s responses so far have not addressed these core issues.

Later, the discussion got heated as we turned to union security. We are fighting for a fair-share arrangement so that everyone who benefits from our contract contributes to maintaining the union that makes those benefits possible. Other Harvard unions already operate under this system. Yet when we raised that fact, Harvard dismissed the comparison and suggested that graduate workers are “different” from other employees because we enter the University as students. They insist that they want to treat campus unions equally…Why not start with accepting our fair-share proposal?

Here’s where things stand: we’ve brought 16 articles to the table crafted to meet the needs of you, our members. Harvard has only responded to 6. Their explanation? That we’ve asked for “too much” and should be grateful for past raises. 

We will keep fighting until Harvard takes our proposals seriously. We know our proposals reflect basic workplace fairness, protection from harassment and retaliation, security in our teaching appointments, and a union built to defend student workers for the long term.

Tl;dr – Two updates in one! Harvard ruins summer by unlawfully carving out a ton of workers, and refuses to elaborate at the table; the bargaining ball is officially in Harvard’s court. On the horizon: visits from Harvard VIPs planned for future sessions.

July 11: We began the session with a statement about the Union’s rejection of the University’s scheme to carve out nearly 1000 graduate research positions in lab sciences. The University told us before the session that they would not be discussing the issue at the table, as it’s not a mandatory subject of bargaining – implying our only route for recourse is the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB is the federal body which rules on labor disputes and unfair labor practices between workers and employers. Under the Trump administration, the status of the NLRB ranges from uncertain to recently being ruled as unconstitutional(?). But one thing is for sure: the NLRB under Trump is a threat to student-worker unionization in private universities, and academic unionization across the country. 

So, instead of taking it to the NLRB, we are organizing around a unit-wide grievance on the carveout. If you have questions or are interested in getting involved in organizing, contact your steward to help us hit the ground running! 

The remainder of the session on July 11th focused on our counter for Employee Appointment Letters, as well as questions around previous articles. When commenting on our Academic Retaliation article, the University asked why we wanted to enshrine a neutral, non-University run process for cases of retaliation when the University has a formal internal system. When we explained that the current process was insufficient for our members, one university rep asked, “Well how do you know it’s not working? To my knowledge there’s been very little use?” Our response was simple: reporting misconduct to a board of the accused’s colleagues tends to negatively influence reporting. Now let’s fast forward tolast week’s session. 

August 21: 

The articles we’ve passed are substantial and feature the highest non-fiscal priorities of our unit according to last year’s bargaining survey! The University acknowledged they “have lots of work to do on [their] end” before the next session, as fourteen of the sixteen articles passed since March remain in the University’s court. We are eager to see some real progress on this batch of articles over the sessions for this semester, and we are excited to see the University engage with us in good faith. 

In lieu of passing articles, they had updates for us: some key players will be joining future sessions, specifically the CFO and the director for the new Office of Community Support, Non-Discrimination, Rights and Responsibilities (RIP to the Office of Gender Equity, the BLGTQ+ Office, and Office for Community Conduct).  

Our next session is scheduled for September 11, 2025. As always, send us an email at [email protected] if you’re interested in providing testimony or feedback from your experiences, learning more about articles, or getting involved in any way! 

Until then – and until we have a new contract – we are all hands on deck! As the semester gets under way, drop by your local OC meeting to see what kinds of organizing would be a good fit for you in the new academic year. Check out our HGSU calendar for a complete overview of important dates, working group meetings, and union-wide socials (pro-tip: you can also add it to your personal G-Cal as well).

At our bargaining session last Friday, 6/27, we focused on proposing a stronger union dues structure and clarifying various cuts to key protections that Harvard proposed in previous sessions. In Article 33, Union Security, we proposed to make HGSU an agency-shop union, where all graduate students who receive the benefits and protections of union advocacy contribute to our finances – either through  membership dues or an equivalent “fair-share” fee. Agency shop is standard for most graduate unions across the US, and would continue to provide freedom to choose union membership while ensuring HGSU’s long-term ability to advocate for improved wages, benefits, and protections.

We received a counterproposal on appointment letters. The university resisted most of our questions about their proposed cuts to Harassment & Discrimination and Intellectual Property protections, and even refused to discuss Real Recourse for harassment because the topic is too “contentious.” Harvard also failed to offer any guidance for non-citizens stranded abroad following visa revocations, and told our bargaining team we were being “unfair” for asking. 

TLDR: Harvard tried to guilt trip our Union about compensation proposals we haven’t even made yet, then gave us “counterproposals” that did not engage with our membership’s demands at all. In fact, their proposal on Non-Discrimination is worse than our current contract and certainly doesn’t provide Real Recourse, and they had no response about paying our unit below the poverty line. We hope to address our membership’s concerns at our next bargaining session tomorrow, Friday 6/27 at 1-4PM – please reach out to [email protected] if you want to learn more or get involved!! As always, check out and share our Bargaining Portal with all updates and proposed articles.

Our last bargaining session on Thursday, 6/12 began with Harvard’s lead negotiator offering what he called a “State of the University”, emphasizing Harvard’s current financial instability such that our fearless(ly anti-union) president Alan Garber has taken a 25% pay cut. To be clear: we acknowledge and are very sensitive to the fact that Harvard may need to operate under a tighter budget with funding cuts, but with a $53 billion endowment, we also believe our student workers should be able to work and study in a labor environment that recognizes us as people worthy of decent work conditions. It was disappointing to hear that the University still won’t explicitly confirm that it intends to honor our “guaranteed” funding packages, and nor are they seeming to make any proactive effort to ensure our workloads will not be increased amidst hiring freezes without added pay to compensate. When asked to do so, Harvard said they would “take it into consideration.” 

The University then presented two “counters” to our proposals on Article 7, Non-Discrimination, Harassment, and Abuse or Intimidation and Article 4, Employee Appointment Security. (You can see all article progress in our tracker!)

The University suggested that our initial proposal for Employee Appointment Security did “a disservice to prior efforts” during the last round of bargaining in 2021 because we disagreed with their reading of who was eligible for security pay. Harvard telling us that we were doing a “disservice” to previous bargaining efforts was quite ironic, considering that the University’s counter for Non-Discrimination not only ignored our membership-approved proposal for Real Recourse, but completely rejected our current contract language, reneging agreements from our previously agreed contract!!

Nearly every section of Harvard’s Non-Discrimination counter-proposal defers to University policies which “may be amended” at Harvard’s will any time. They fully axed explicit language to protect specific groups including (but not limited to!) race, color, religion, caste, creed, sex, sexual orientation, and more – all of which are in our previously agreed contract language. By defaulting to University-wide policies instead, Harvard is actively refusing to protect any group according to their specific needs or concerns in our contract, and leaves employment protections up to those in control of a policy they can change at will. This sets us up to potentially lose some, if not many, of our hard-won victories in the existing contract, even as Harvard’s team acknowledged that our proposal “reflected priorities and concerns that are meaningful to members”.

We noted this hypocrisy to the University, and highlighted that we are striving to create a contract that protects our student workers and enables them to provide for themselves and their families in an area with one of the most expensive living costs in the country. Our proposal for Appointment Security reflects that sentiment. 

The University proposals took the bulk of our session, but we managed to present our proposal for the article on Holidays. We are pushing for Spring Break leave for all student workers, for employers to be required to inform student workers that they are entitled to personal time and holidays, and expanded eligibility for time off to all workers, including those in hourly positions. 

Stay tuned for updates on Non-Discrimination/Real Recourse plus previously proposed and new articles – we have another bargaining session with the university tomorrow Friday 6/27 at 1-4PM. As always, send us an email at [email protected] if you’re interested in providing testimony or feedback from your experiences, learning more about articles, or getting involved in any way!

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?