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The union will return to the bargaining table June 9 and 23.
Members of the Harvard Graduate Student Union picketing at an entrance next to the Engineering Sciences Laboratory on Oxford Street. John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe
After 40 days on the picket line, Harvard’s graduate student workers ended their longest strike to date on Monday without securing a new contract.
The Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW), which represents more than 4,000 student workers across Harvard University’s 13 schools, voted to suspend the strike after what union leaders described as a shift in the university’s approach during Friday’s bargaining session, the union said in a press release.
HGSU-UAW President Denish Jaswal said the university “signaled willingness” to engage on certain issues, including pay parity between teaching fellows and research assistants, protections for non-citizen workers, and anti-discrimination provisions.
“The way that the university engaged with us at the table at that session was a sign of hope that perhaps there’s movement to be made with the university,” Jaswal told Boston.com.
The union has spent the past 14 months negotiating a contract with the university. During that time, Harvard has expanded benefits to graduate students, offered full dental coverage for Ph.D. students, and increased its proposed four-year wage package by 1 percent following negotiations, according to the union’s press release.
“While these proposals fall far short of the union’s demands for a living wage and do not address workplace protections, like grievability of harassment and discrimination or non-citizen protections, they were the first indication of engagement from the university on the union’s priorities,” the press release continues.
Negotiations are scheduled to resume June 9 and June 23, according to Jaswal.
In a letter to faculty Monday, Harvard Deputy Provost Jessica Soban and Managing Director of Labor and Employee Relations Paul Curran wrote that the university has met with the union 28 times and remains committed to “bargaining in good faith.”
Members of the Harvard Graduate Student Union picket in front of the Science Center. – John Tlumacki/Boston Globe
Soban and Curran pointed to Harvard’s latest compensation proposal, which includes a 2.75 percent raise upon ratification of a contract and an additional 3.25 percent increase on July 1 for salaried student workers.
They also noted that Harvard has extended benefits previously reserved for full-time staff to part-time student workers, such as access to a legal services plan.
“Our student workers have a vital role in advancing Harvard’s teaching and research mission, and we remain committed to reaching an agreement that recognizes their contributions to our pursuit of academic excellence,” the letter reads in part.
Throughout the strike, union members maintained picket lines across Harvard’s Cambridge and Longwood campuses. The union said workers disrupted more than 200 shipments, creating supply shortages in some research laboratories.
“Research laboratories ground to a halt, course material was left untaught, and assignments went ungraded,” the union said in the press release.
The strike also drew attention beyond Harvard’s campuses. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu withdrew from a scheduled Harvard Law School speaking engagement Wednesday after efforts to find an alternative arrangement that would allow her to avoid crossing a picket line of striking graduate workers proved unsuccessful.
Jaswal described the 40-day strike as both exhausting and empowering for participants.
“It took thousands of our members, pouring a lot of their hearts, souls, time, energy into it, she said. “While it was physically exhausting [and] emotionally exhausting, it was also very strengthening and empowering.”
Despite the challenges, Jaswal said the experience strengthened solidarity among workers and left many energized for the next phase of negotiations.
“There was hundreds and hundreds of workers out every day, sometimes thousands of workers out every day, and we meet each other and realize we all care enough to be out here with one another and actually fight for a better world,” she said. “Sure we’re tired, but I think we’re also empowered, energized, and ready to keep the fight up.”
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