At bargaining today, Harvard Admin offered us a pay package that doesn’t even keep up with inflation, including:

  1. A wage freeze for last year and a 2.5% raise for the next two years (except for HMS postdocs who could get a $8000 [11%] pay cut).
  2. Deletion of any step system for wages.
  3. No commitment to maintaining health insurance standards.
  4. No retirement for postdocs.
  5. No dental insurance for TAs.
  6. No improved transit/parking benefits.
  7. Status quo on everything else.

If you haven’t voted in the strike authorization vote, please do! The more of us who show we are going to stand together, the more we show them we want a contract that addresses our concerns. We need to put pressure on them to stop the delays and get a contract we can accept!

Details:

After two months, Harvard admin finally brought counters for five (out of fourteen) economic articles. It took their team two months to propose no improvements (and indeed some degradation of compensation). Admin felt the need to begin the conversation by claiming financial losses due to the Trump administration (even though they saw a 11.9% Return on Investment with the endowment last year), but the proposals they are offering are far below the standards set in other higher ed contracts from the same timeframe.  

To be clear, our entire economic proposal would cost much less than the money Harvard reportedly lost on cryptocurrency.

Here are the details of the economic proposals the administration brought to the table today:

Food for thought: Why is this taking so long?

A recent article in the Guardian reports that first contracts where employers hire an anti-union law firm (Harvard admins have hired Morgan Brown Joy) take an average 465 days from election to first contract.

Our current negotiations are at 778 days! Admins here are going exceptionally slow, likely intentionally so they can continue to gut our workforce by taking advantage of Trump’s agenda.

Our current negotiations are at 778 days! Admins here are going exceptionally slow, likely intentionally so they can continue to gut our workforce by taking advantage of Trump’s agenda.

  • Compensation. They are maintaining last year’s wage freezes, and offering a 2.5% increase added to your FY 2026 salary upon signing the contract (new hires will be lower), 2.5% increase in FY 28 and 29, and 2.75% in FY 30. They are removing any current step increases and creating new minimums, which in some cases are actually far lower than the current ones: for example, they want to lower the HMS postdoc minimum salary by $8,000 or 11%. Their language allows them to give HMS postdocs the 2.5% raise for FY 2027, then drop down to $67,800 when they renew your appointment. A pay cut of 11% for those people.
  • Health Benefits. They largely offered no improvements to our health plans. They are refusing to put a cap on the amount our health insurance costs can increase year to year. When we saw a nearly 17% increase in our insurance this year, it’s disappointing that admins insist on continuing to be able to do that to us. Additionally, they are refusing to guarantee they will continue to provide a benefits plan that covers gender affirming care at a time when such rights are under attack. They are putting the responsibility of understanding which plans are visa compliant on visa holders, setting us/themselves up for a potential repeat of last year’s J1 visa crisis.
  • Retirement and Retiree Benefits. Both of these articles offer no improvements. Admins refused to offer postdocs retirement benefits (available to postdocs in many other universities), and when pressed about why, they offered no explanation other than “that’s how it’s always been” (direct quote).
  • Parking and Transit. They offered a proposal with no material improvements. It allows each of us to choose between a parking benefit or 60% reduced MBTA pass. All members can use the $360 bike reimbursement benefit.

    For all of these, management explicitly said that they do not have any rationale for their proposals. Furthermore, they want to be able to change our benefits articles unilaterally even after the contract is enacted!

Our team worked hard to prepare two counters for the admins.

  • Professional Standing We reasserted our article, which the administration rejected twice simply because they claim, as they have in other proposals, that we do not need these provisions in our contract. But if these articles are not in our contract, we have no ability to enforce the policies if they violate them. And nothing is to prevent them from changing the existing policies for the worse.
  • Titles and Classifications. We are getting closer with this article, but we have some outstanding differences. We refuse to keep two parallel teaching tracks (formerly Lecturers v. Preceptors, now they’re suggesting Lecturer Track A and B). Crucially, we are including language to make our contract stronger by refusing to allow Harvard to unilaterally modify, eliminate or create new titles and thereby circumventing it.

If the administration continues to ignore the value that we provide to the university, a strike would be the best way to make our value clear. Vote! Tell your friends here and beyond about this. The richest university in the world can afford to pay you.

In solidarity,

HAW-UAW Bargaining Committee