Posts tagged Harvard
‘Harder for All of Us’: Confusion Reigns After Harvard Excludes 900 Grad Students From Union
August 19, 2025 // Lindsey E. Adams, a Ph.D. student in Harvard’s virology program, opened her pay stub on July 1 to a strange sight: Her research stipend was no longer listed as a union stipend, and no union dues were deducted from her pay. But nothing about Adams’ job was different — not her hours, not her supervisor, not the lab where she works or the tasks she completes every day. “My work day-to-day has not changed at all,” she said. Adams was one of the more than 900 students on research-based stipends removed from Harvard’s graduate student union’s bargaining unit in July shortly after the union’s second contract with the University expired.
Commentary: To Harvard and Back with Julie Su
August 18, 2025 // This year, Julie Su, Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of labor, became a resident fellow with Harvard’s Kennedy School, Institute of Politics. The Century Foundation also brought Su on board as a full-time senior fellow. These prestigious institutions seem to have overlooked key events in Su’s long career. Harvard, where Su, a Stanford grad, earned her law degree, hails the Biden nominee as “a nationally recognized workers’ rights and civil rights expert.” As California’s labor commissioner, Su was “widely credited with a renaissance in enforcement and creative approaches to combating wage theft and protecting immigrant workers.” In reality, her experience was a bit more extensive.
Commentary: Ivy Leaguers Aren’t Auto Workers
July 21, 2025 // In general, NLRB decisions are fake law made by fake judges who have to interpret a poorly written statute from 90 years ago that is based on assumptions about industrial organization that no longer obtain in the United States. But the NLRB remains powerful nonetheless, and its decisions matter. That’s why Russell Burgett, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, which is private, is asking the NLRB to overturn the 2016 Columbia ruling. He isn’t a member of the Cornell graduate students’ union, a UE affiliate, and he said in charges filed with the NLRB on Monday that his choice not to join makes it harder for him to complete his education.
The push to unionize doctors at Mass General Brigham
April 1, 2025 // “We are not claiming poverty or trying to bemoan our financial status as people who are suffering in the current economy,” he said. “We’re very aware of our position in kind of the socioeconomic hierarchy. That being said, it is really within everyone's interest to have a primary care workforce that has the most talented, engaged, excited, and productive doctors that we can.”
Julie Su: ‘Unions were built for big fights’
February 23, 2025 // In four years at the U.S. Department of Labor under President Biden, including two as acting secretary of labor, Julie Su ’94 helped to implement the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, extend overtime pay for salaried workers, and facilitate agreements between employers and unions for autoworkers, longshoremen, school bus manufacturers, and airplane machinists. In those contract negotiations, Su, a labor rights activist, often heard from employers that the wage increases demanded by workers were too high because they were “above the market wage.” She pushed back on that premise, she explained in remarks at the Feb. 14 graduation of the Harvard Trade Union Program (HTUP).
‘Time is running out.’ University unions rush to organize before the Trump White House
December 17, 2024 // Between 2012 and 2023, the number of unionized graduate student and postdoctoral workers more than doubled, from roughly 64,000 to 150,000. Faculty unions also increased by 7%, from 374,000 to 402,000, in the same period, the report said. Today, more than a third of graduate-student and postdoctoral workers are unionized while a quarter of faculty are. “Among faculty, the drive for unionization has been strongest among non-tenure track faculty,”
‘Make It A Union Town’: Harvard Labor Organizers Discuss Push to Unionize at HLS Event
April 4, 2024 // Last month, HAW-UAW and Harvard reached an agreement allowing the group to hold a unionization election in early April, bypassing a lengthy union recognition hearing process with the National Labor Relations Board. If the vote to unionize succeeds, HAW-UAW will begin preparing to bargain with the University. Given said the renewed push to unionize Harvard has been a “long time coming.” In response to all of the frustrations expressed, Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement that “Harvard is committed to the democratic process, respects the individuals’ right to choose whether or not to be represented by a union, and strongly believes that voters should make the choice that is right for them.”
The Newest Union Members Are Undergrads
December 20, 2023 // With help from groups like the Service Employees International Union and the Office and Professional Employees International Union, students consolidated support for elections, contract talks and headline-making protests. Their muscle has surprised longtime observers of the labor movement, some of whom have wondered where, exactly, young adults learned some of the finer points of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. (Part of the answer: Instagram direct messages with organizers on other campuses.)
ResLife Student Workers’ Unionization Effort Calls for Job Transparency and Equitable Wages
September 27, 2023 // They also explained that ResLife student workers are allowed by the National Labor Relations Board to start attempts to negotiate a new contract with BC if 30 percent of ResLife student workers sign a union authorization card. At this point, the RAs have had no communication with the University about unionization efforts, the Upper Campus RA said.
Push to unionize at college dorms is growing
March 31, 2023 // Colleges have been a breeding ground for illness and social havoc since the pandemic began, and much of the onus has been placed on RAs, who are appointed to shepherd the well-being of an entire floor of younger students. In the past, that has typically meant hosting events, mediating roommate disputes, and perhaps guiding an overserved first-year safely to bed. For this, RAs are compensated with free or discounted housing and meal plans. But in recent semesters, and especially since schools reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, those responsibilities have ballooned. RAs who spoke with the Globe describe being deputized as “COVID police” to enforce masking and social distance, and wrangling students whose university — or even high school — experience was stunted by lockdowns and remote learning. Several schools later assigned RAs to longer overnight “on call” shifts and additional check-ins with residents.