Posts tagged Harvard University
Op-ed: Other states should copy NC’s model labor policy
October 21, 2026 // In both the public and private sectors, North Carolina protects employees’ right to choose. It gives private employees a right to opt out of union dues. And it protects public employees from having a union contract foisted on them. In effect, it respects choice by preventing coercion. But elsewhere, public policy is moving in a different direction — a direction that sacrifices choice in favor of more union membership. The prime example is a recent proposal by academics at Harvard University, which would create a statewide system of “sectoral bargaining.” Sectoral bargaining is the opposite of choice: It funnels every employee in an industry into a single union, whether an employee voted for the union or not. The proposal’s premise is that unions are automatically good for workers, so workers should automatically be put into unions. Choice is beside the point.
Harvard University graduate workers vote to authorize strike
October 9, 2026 // Harvard University graduate students have voted to authorize a strike after more than a year and a half of contract negotiations have failed to produce an agreement. Thousands of graduate students went on strike for 40 days back in April. According to the union, more than 4,000 workers represented by the Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW Local 5118 (HGSU) cast ballots on Oct. 6, with 88% voting in favor of strike authorization.
Op-ed: Sean O’Brien is just Randi Weingarten in a hard hat
September 20, 2026 // Unions across sectors, including the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, and largely private-sector Communications Workers of America, want contracts to cover sex change procedures and abortions, while other unions demand workers submit to diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. Conservatives should not expect organized labor, whose members are now nearly half directly employed by governments, to be anything other than fully committed to Big Government and other entities that support Everything Leftism. There’s no clean way to divide organized labor against itself, so any conservative who wants to empower union bosses needs to know they are empowering all of them, including the ones they know better than to help.
Grad Students Rally Outside Garber’s Home as Strike Enters Third Week
May 11, 2026 // A small group of striking graduate student workers rallied outside Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76’s private residence early Friday morning, marking a new escalation in the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers’ ongoing strike as contract negotiations with the University remain stalled. Roughly 10 demonstrators gathered outside Garber’s home from about 6 to 6:30 a.m., chanting and writing “CONTRACT NOW” in pink chalk on the sidewalk. The group represented a small fraction of HGSU-UAW, which represents roughly 5,000 graduate student workers.
Harvard Graduate Workers Set Strike for April 21 if Talks Fail
April 15, 2026 // The looming walkout would mark the third time the Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers has moved to strike since its founding. In November 2019, after more than a year at the bargaining table, the union’s bargaining committee authorized its first strike. Graduate student workers protested for five weeks, but ultimately did not secure an initial contract. Nearly two years later, as negotiations for a second contract stalled, the union organized a three-day strike in late 2021. Disagreements over key provisions — including agency shop and compensation — remained unresolved, prompting undergraduate workers to walk out in solidarity with graduate students.
Labor Watch: St. John’s Axes Unions, CSU Strike Pays Off
March 5, 2026 // St. John’s is the second institution to use a religious exemption to shutter its union this academic year; in the fall, the Loyola Marymount University Board of Trustees announced it would no longer recognize its non-tenure-track faculty union and cease bargaining.
Right-to-work facts vs. myths
February 12, 2025 // What’s become evident over the decades is that right-to-work laws are associated with statistically significant gains in employment, particularly manufacturing employment, job opportunities, population growth and economic growth. If New Hampshire adopts a right-to-work law, we would expect to see improvements in all of those areas, along with an improvement in state business tax revenues resulting from the additional business activity. As for freedom vs. coercion, workers have First Amendment rights not to associate with or fund membership organizations that they choose not to join. If workers want to join unions, they should be free to do so.
Local 33 and Yale reach historic tentative agreement
December 12, 2023 // In the tentative agreement, Yale agreed to recognize the union until 2031, even if changes in federal labor guidelines void the status of graduate students at private universities as union-eligible workers. Although the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, ruled in 2016 that private school graduate workers have the right to unionize, policy experts have long theorized that a Republican-appointed NLRB might attempt to overturn that ruling. The tentative agreement protects the right of Local 33 to exist for the next two presidential administrations.
Teachers union presidents blast Supreme Court affirmative action ruling
July 14, 2023 // In a Twitter Spaces online, audio-only discussion event hosted by the progressive group Alliance for Justice, both Weingarten and Pringle blasted the Court. Weingarten emphasized that the Court’s ruling was “horrible” and immediately drew a connection to her interpretations of history. “What this decision does is basically ignore the original sin of slavery and the effects of that original sin and pretends that there is no longer an effect to it,” Weingarten affirmed. “And [it] basically says that equal protection means whatever the dominant power play is right now, that’s what should be happening in America.” Weingarten claimed that the Court “is no longer calling balls and strikes” and is too busy “making law that is quite ideological.” In her words, “Our job has gotten both harder and easier in the last couple years because of these decisions — a dynamic she attributes to the public having “no confidence in the Court.”
Right-to-Work battle looms in Michigan: Businesses fear repeal by Democrats
December 5, 2022 // Michigan business groups are wary of Democrats’ calls to repeal Right-to-Work laws when they take charge in Lansing early next year, saying the state instead should focus on economic policies that attract jobs. Business Leaders for Michigan, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and chamber leaders from the state’s two largest cities — Detroit and Grand Rapids — all urge caution. But Democrats — who are backed heavily by unions including the Michigan Education Association and United Auto Workers — say the move prioritizes workers and labor rights.