Our last bargaining session underscored for the Bargaining Committee (BC) that we don’t have much of a partner across the table. Despite us having spent dozens of hours patiently explaining to the representatives of the Harvard Corporation the very real problems our workers face, the admin team continues to ignore our arguments and put the same bad policies on the table. They do not listen when we tell them what is better for our students and research—they are even willing to take on significant additional administrative burdens in order to resist common-sense improvements to the status quo.

But thousands of us together are stronger than any of us alone. You can help. We all need to talk to our coworkers, participate in Union events, and attend bargaining sessions. (The next session is February 3rd, and bundle up for the rally on February 4th!) Standing together and showing our resolve is our best chance to win a strong contract that would protect non-citizen workers, make our jobs more secure, fight harassment and discrimination, and win fair compensation for our work.

Here’s how one observer describes Friday’s bargaining session:

Hi, rank and file member from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences here. I’m a member of the teaching faculty and have attended bargaining sessions from time to time, both in person and over Zoom.

On Friday, the Corporation behaved more unprofessionally than I’ve ever previously seen. After HAW presented a comprehensive package proposal, taking into serious consideration the Corporation’s previous counterproposals, they responded with three counters that showed no real movement on some of the most important non-economic aspects of our contract. Contrary to the Corporation’s claims, I couldn’t detect any differences between their new proposal for Titles and Classifications and last year’s initial document. Also, their counter regarding Workload included no maximum work hours for teaching faculty AND and expansion in course assignments for Preceptors in particular, among other things. The Corporation mentioned that an expanded workload and mandatory enrollment minimums were acceptable tradeoffs for the elimination of time caps. This would not only make it MORE difficult to keep our jobs, but would also be devastating to our students’ education and the University’s mission.

In the middle of this important discussion regarding Harvard’s future, one of the Corporation’s negotiators suddenly snapped at HAW’s bargaining committee, derailing the conversation and demanding to know when the United Autoworkers (not us) would have an economic package for them. This outburst revealed the administration’s true feelings regarding our Union: to them, we are infantile and unserious, and the UAW is somehow the real authority behind this movement. That’s simply not the case, but it’s clear from the Corporation’s actions that something needs to change. We need to show up to the bargaining sessions, attend work-ins and rallies, and make it clear to them that the voice in that room reflects all of us academic workers.

-DT

Here’s the full update:

We came to this session with the intent of starting the year on a positive note. We offered a package (an interlinked bundle of proposals) with significant concessions on administration priorities contingent upon admin’s acceptance of a handful of key Union provisions. We had hoped to get a TA (tentative agreement) on this package of 5 articles, but the Corporation did not sign them at the bargaining session.  

In return, we received three counterproposals with very little movement other than cosmetic reorganization, restating old Corporation positions that we have already explained, several times, that we cannot accept. The one meaningful concession had already been communicated orally in August: removing time caps for Teaching Assistants. But as with their earlier proposals on this front, their ostensible lifting of time caps is linked to several poison pills that would give admin the ability to enforce de facto time caps for many workers and require all current instructional faculty to reapply for our own jobs. Worse, management also stated clearly that they are trying to trade their “concession” on time caps for higher workloads on NTT faculty, especially Preceptors.

Here’s a rundown of the Corporation’s counters:

  • Management Rights: Virtually no change from their last position. They want broad discretion for unilateral decision-making, including over matters such as research methodology, grading policies, and modifications to the very job classifications we are supposedly bargaining over.
  • Titles and Classifications: The biggest change from the previous version is that they deleted all of the criteria for promotions and said that they would put them in a forthcoming Promotions article. Although the Union and the administration are largely aligned on the parameters for staff and research positions, their proposal continues to carve out “stipendees” who are supported by external funding, denying successful fundraisers their right to union representation.
    • For instructional faculty, admin’s position is much more problematic. It would:
      • Force all current employees to reapply in open searches to access the new career ladder;
      • Maintain the misclassification of HDS faculty as “temporary” (which denies them access to benefits).
      • Maintain Teaching Assistant titles and short contracts for workers who are misclassified as such;
      • Maintain the meaningless Lecturer/Preceptor distinction;
      • Impose an “up-or-out” system for Lecturers and Preceptors that would rely on administrative discretion and therefore allow for a de-facto time cap;
  • Workloads: While the administration agreed to a few relatively minor provisions we had proposed, their latest counterproposal continues to offer no meaningful protections against overwork for any members of our bargaining unit. In fact, the article seeks to lock in overwork for some teaching faculty. Here are a selection of provisions that admin has proposed:
    • Cumulative course enrollment minimums of 50 enrollments per year for Lecturers and 30 per year for Preceptors.
    • Increased teaching loads for Lecturers and Preceptors;
    • No reckoning of (and therefore neither limits upon nor consistent pay for) advising and departmental service;
    • Faculty may be required to teach at any time of day or on weekends;
    • No limits on work for teaching faculty aside from an overarching limit of six courses or equivalents per year;
    • A “minimum” of a 35-40 hour work week, with no contractual maximum;
    • No protections against after-hours work—your supervisor can email you and demand urgent action at any time;
    • No guarantee of extra pay for extra work and no right to refuse it;

The Union proposed the following five articles as a “package,” meaning that all provisions are tied together and a rejection of any provision effectively entails a reversion to the Union’s last position on all issues:

  • Evaluations: This package would accept admin’s last proposal on evaluations, which stipulates that the contents of supervisory evaluations are not grievable but would concretize a transparent and fair evaluation process, including advance notice of teaching observations and limited reliance upon student evaluations.
  • Flex Work: This package would largely accept admin’s last proposal on flex work, which would allow employees to seek redress internally for disputes with their supervisors over flexible working arrangements, but would not allow for external arbitration of such matters.
  • Union Access and Rights: This package would grant the Union has access to information about our workers’ visa status, in order to help ensure that the Union can offer targeted support to non-citizen workers and that University policies and procedures are in line with visa requirements (a significant issue, as we have noted in recent emails).
  • Access to Services: Along with maintaining status quo access to office space, libraries, and University computing, this package would extend email access for employees leaving Harvard by 90 days and fee-free access to the libraries for up to 1 year.
  • IP Rights: This package would defer to University policy on IP rights, but would preserve workers’ rights to grievance and arbitration if this policy is violated.