Harvard Doesn’t Think You Deserve a Seat at the Table

Right now, Harvard is fighting Trump in court. It’s also using his tactics at the bargaining table.

Earlier this month, University administrators notified the Harvard Graduate Students Union of a massive carveout of union membership, removing more than 800 workers from our collective bargaining unit and partially impacting hundreds more.

While deeply upsetting, this move is not surprising. It is the latest in a series of union-busting attacks that must be seen as an extension of Harvard’s historical hostility towards organized labor. Once again, the University has demonstrated that it would rather dismantle its workers’ protections than listen to them.

When graduate workers voted on unionization in 2016, Harvard excluded hundreds of students from required eligible voter lists, leading the National Labor Relations Board to order a second election. After a majority of workers voted to unionize, they faced fierce resistance during contract negotiations, with the University issuing guidance to departments to make employment offers effectively contingent on non-participation in strike action — a move reminiscent of so-called “yellow dog contracts” frequently employed in the 19th century.

Harvard’s administration has since taken every opportunity to reduce the unit, excluding over 100 Population Health Sciences workers in 2020 and roughly 70 Psychology workers in 2022. In the latter case, despite an arbitrator and a district court ruling against Harvard, in June it appealed yet again, shelling out legal fees at a time of unprecedented financial pressure.

This pattern of union busting extends across campus. Harvard fought the formation of what would become the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including by allegedly spreading rumors that the union endangered pregnant workers. More recently, unionizing resident tutors reported facing captive audience anti-union meetings with management. As provost, now-University president Alan M. Garber ’76 was central to anti-union activities, leading to a campaign against his selection for president by labor activists.

In current contract negotiations with HGSU, the administration has ratcheted up its hostility. It has consistently opposed accessible, transparent bargaining, even cancelling the first bargaining session mere hours in advance after raising concerns about the potential presence of observers. Since then, its negotiators have refused to agree to an open-bargaining provision which would allow rank-and-file union members to attend bargaining sessions, despite over 1,200 workers and community supporters petitioning Harvard. And the University not only rejected the union’s request for third-party arbitration in Title IX cases, but counter-proposed undermining protections against harassment and discrimination guaranteed in the last contract.

Harvard’s anti-union crusade has now culminated in this large unilateral carveout of HGSU’s membership. The University communicated the decision — which changed a previously agreed upon understanding of the unit definition — with a terse email, claiming absurdly that stipend-funded research assistants were included “erroneously” since 2017. Even labor lawyers at Harvard note that this sweeping move runs counter to legal precedent.

The administration’s move jeopardizes HGSU’s financial security at a time when the protections it affords to student workers are more important than ever. Carved-out workers are unable to access the union’s emergency, international worker assistance, and legal defense funds.

The tactic — a unilateral, legally questionable attack on a political opponent — is strikingly similar to the Trump administration’s own assault on Harvard. And in making this move, Harvard is taking advantage of a Trump-weakened NLRB to intimidate its workers and deprive them of their rights, all while loudly condemning the attacks upon itself.

Why, while under public scrutiny, would Harvard take this ugly course of action? A collectively bargained union contract is one of few democratic checks on an otherwise deeply hierarchical University. In its negotiations with the federal government, Harvard may agree to go beyond what is required by federal law in the Trump administration’s campaign against DEI programs, social justice research, pro-Palestinian speech, and gender-based protections. We have already seen this in the quiet removal of DEI offices, and the dismantling of scholarship on Palestine across the University.

Without institutions like a faculty senate, faculty, students, and staff have few avenues to influence the outcome of these dangerous negotiations. For graduate workers, insurance against capitulation can only come from our union contract. The contract article against harassment and discrimination that Harvard is trying to roll back, for instance, would be a bulwark against potential concessions to Trump, or federal dismantling of Title IX enforcement.

Harvard's pattern of labor suppression makes it clear that it does not think its workers deserve a seat at the table. It does not want students, faculty, or staff to have a real say in running this institution, an institution powered by the labor that graduate workers perform every day as they teach sections, grade papers, conduct experiments, write grants, and so much more.

Ominously, the affected HGSU workers are losing legal protections from firing at a moment when administrators are seeking to reduce costs, particularly at the schools targeted by this carveout. With this legally dubious move, Harvard’s administration conveniently sets the stage to displace the financial pressure it is under by prioritizing the institution over the workers who make it run.

As union members, we know that the University’s mistake is in imagining it can separate the one from the other.

Evan R. Lemire is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Population Health Sciences at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a steward for the Harvard Graduate Students Union. Sudipta Saha is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Population Health Sciences at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Vice-President of HGSU.