Overview
- Harvard graduate student workers walked off the job Tuesday after the union and the university failed to reach a contract by an 11:59 p.m. deadline.
- The union represents more than 4,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers and says thousands of teaching fellows, research assistants, and hourly student employees joined pickets, rallies, and a march to President Garber’s office.
- HGSU-UAW says its three core demands are higher wages and benefits, stronger protections for noncitizen students, and an independent grievance process for harassment and discrimination complaints.
- Harvard’s Oct. 22 proposal offered a 6.1 percent raise on ratification and 3 percent annual increases that the university says amount to nearly a 16 percent compounded gain while the union says the plan falls short of inflation and amounts to a pay cut.
- The stopwork raises broader risks to campus operations because other unions have set strike deadlines or authorized walkouts, and the parties remain locked in a legal dispute over whether a repeat strike can be treated as unprotected intermittent action.