While HAW has been fighting for job security for members of our unit, management ended Monday’s session by saying that academic appointees should not assume their appointments at Harvard will be renewed even if they are good at their jobs. Admin’s lawyer acknowledged that this treats us as disposable labor, rather than crucial scholars and educators at this university.
This came right after a prolonged debate about the administration’s attempt to exclude many workers from our union on the claim that some of us do not work for Harvard because of how we get paid (stipend instead of salary). They have signaled that they might make similarly misleading claims about who should be excluded as a “supervisor.”
We will overcome these attacks on our rights and the integrity of our union by sticking together. Help us do so by signing our Contract Now Petition or filling out our Get Involved Form.
Additional Highlights:
- Management took over six weeks to return a counterproposal on a foundational issue that they themselves acknowledged was incomplete and not representative of their current position .
- Artificial Intelligence is on the table again.
- We are extremely close on Access Needs and Health & Safety.
- We proposed an Appointment Security article to protect any job offer you receive.
Here’s a more detailed overview of the proposals passed at the session:
Proposals from Management:
Artificial Intelligence (Memorandum of Understanding)
- The administration putting anything about AI on the table represents progress, as they have been reluctant thus far to engage on the topic at all. But this MOU offers little-to-no protections, and would not be an enforceable part of the contract.
- Management wants the right to implement and mandate AI with no restrictions (including being allowed to make deepfakes of you).
- As presented, Management implied that AI is not yet affecting our working conditions.
- Management continues to refuse to share demographic data with the Union that is crucial to ensuring that discrimination is not occurring.
- This article protects the Union’s ability to administratively function.
Employment Records and Evaluations
- This article protects how and when management stores and shares information about us Employees.
- Management made it very clear—in their strikes of Union-proposed language and their explanations at the table—that they want to reserve the right to voluntarily share our records with government agencies without a subpoena or other legal compulsion.
Titles & Classifications (and Appointments & Reappointments)
- These articles cover the length of appointments, when and how you get reappointed, whether there are timecaps, and descriptions of the various roles in our unit.
- We originally proposed these as two articles. Management combined them in their original counterproposals, and we followed their lead in an attempt to streamline negotiations. Now, almost two months since our last proposal management just handed back proposals almost identical with their previous position (in May) but split in two articles again.
- Upon questioning, they acknowledged that the current proposals do not fully capture their current position. They offered, for example, that they no longer will seek to impose the eight-year-rule timecap on Teaching Assistants. We will be pressing them to put their current position in writing before we craft a response.
- Management continues to assert that stipendees do not work for Harvard.
Our Proposals:
Appointment Notification & Security
- This article guarantees that all workers receive a formal written job offer or letter of appointment, and that the administration must honor the terms of that offer/letter.
- This is a standard protection, common to most academic contracts.
- This article is about ensuring necessary accessibility accommodations.
- At our last session, we won an option for workers to receive provisional accommodations for up to 30 days while awaiting medical documentation.
- In this counterproposal, we aim to remove arbitrary discretion from the granting of such accommodations and ensure that 30 days is guaranteed as a minimum, not a maximum.
- Otherwise, we are close to an agreement with the administration on this article.
- This article is about ensuring a safe working environment.
- Having won basic protections as well as important new protections on emergent threats (including doxing), we are left with one outstanding issue: We are seeking guarantees of enhanced mental health support in the (hopefully) rare circumstances of workplace violence.
- This important article dictates how and when layoffs can occur.
- Management wants to maintain the status quo: broad discretion on executing layoffs, arbitrary distinctions in layoff benefits between academic appointees and staff employees, and treatment of non-reappointment (without cause) as different from layoff.
- Our proposal continues to insist that layoffs should only occur in specific cases (such as loss of funding or lack of curricular need), that non-reappointment (except as dismissal for just cause) is a layoff, and that academic appointees should have access to layoff benefits.l
- We’ve moved our proposals on expanded severance benefits to our forthcoming package of economic articles.
Non-Article discussions:
Stipendees and Instructors as “supervisors”:
- Management claims that many of us (especially stipendees) do not work for the institution.
- Instead they claim those people have “no work requirements”, which would mean that those people would never have to come to lab meeting, cover anyone’ s work, or even come into the lab.
- Management claimed precedent in “case law” for excluding stipendees but refused to cite any specific cases or documents.
- They want to consider workers inclusion in the union on a “case-by-case” basis, which would effectively mean they could arbitrarily exclude vast numbers of researchers from union protections pending discussion of those individual cases.
- Are you now or have you previously been a stipendee? You can help maintain your inclusion in the union by speaking at bargaining about your work requirements. Email harvardacademicworkers@gmail.com if you can testify, or if you want to privately offer comments or questions about admin’s position. We would be thrilled to welcome you to a bargaining session to share your experience directly with administrators!
Reappointment Security:
- Management said they don’t want to operate on the assumption of reappointment.
- This would essentially mean that any worker on a term-limited position (including all academic appointees) could be fired at the end of any appointment for any arbitrary reason (including as retaliation).
- Firing by non-reappointment is a standard practice in academia, but not common in other jobs (including comparable project based ones).
- Unions at other Universities have won “presumptive reappointment” in their contracts, guaranteeing that an academic worker can retain their position if the institution continues to need their work and they do their job well.
- We maintain that, so long as the administration can non-reappoint any worker for any reason, we do not actually enjoy the just cause protections against firing that we have won elsewhere in this contract.
- In response to admin’s lawyer explaining their desire to reserve the right to not reappoint a worker for any reason, Greg, from our Bargaining Committee, asked: “You do understand that this makes our members feel disposable?” To which Management’s lawyer simply said “Yes.”
In solidarity,
The Harvard Academic Workers FAS/HMS/HDS Bargaining CommitteeBargaining Update: We are not disposable