In Support of the Graduate Workers Strike

Harvard graduate workers are on strike this week. It’s Harvard’s job to make sure they aren’t next week.

The Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers has been in negotiations with the Harvard administration for the last 15 months pursuing a fair contract.

To state the obvious, negotiations have been largely unsuccessful. Earlier this month, citing a lack of engagement on the core concerns of the bargaining unit — including wages, independent arbitration for cases of harassment and discrimination, and non-citizen worker protections — HGSU-UAW’s bargaining committee set an April 21 deadline for their strike.

The union is not unfairly hardballing the University — their demands are fairly reasonable. Besides the above demands, the union is also asking for anti-retaliation protections, health and safety rights, academic freedom, and discipline and discharge rights, among others.

Their demands are also very comparable with policies already in place at peer institutions. Comparable wages, third-party arbitration, and protections for non-citizen workers have already been put into place at MIT and Stanford University.

Harvard needs to pick up the pace.

Not only that, but Harvard’s graduate students undergo difficulties on a daily basis; in return for their crucial workloads — teaching, grading, assisting research — they often are paid less than it takes to live in a city like Cambridge, where the cost of living is eye-watering.

The members of HGSU-UAW deserve stable, livable wages that reflect their essential role at Harvard. Beyond the moral case, paying unlivable stipends surely doesn’t help student workers earn nor provide a high quality education — no one’s writing a good dissertation on an empty stomach.

As for the absence of enforceable protections for non-citizen workers, Harvard’s neglect leaves its community members vulnerable to unprecedented intimidation by the federal government. Harvard has the responsibility to protect its scholars — so as the union demands, Harvard should codify a rule to not share international workers whereabouts without a judicial warrant and fund legal counsel.

Likewise, the lack of independent arbitration for harassment claims puts workers in an unsafe working environment. Handling complaints internally can lead to power imbalances and discourage reporting through fear of retaliation — if New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan could all understand that, why can’t Harvard?

HGSU-UAW’s strike is simply so that Harvard’s graduate workers can live at the standard that they deserve, under the conditions they deserve.

It’s especially apparent how important graduate workers are to Harvard with the chaos the strike has quickly caused at the University — classes have been cancelled, relocated, and moved online. Disruption will only magnify as the strike prolongs into reading period and finals.

When Harvard is negotiating with its workers regarding their demands, it ought to consider just how essential their labor is.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

Have a suggestion, question, or concern for The Crimson Editorial Board? Click here.