This past Thursday, we held our eleventh bargaining session with the administration. See below for a rundown of the proposals that changed hands.

First, the day before the bargaining session, the administration communicated via email that, despite the broad support for ending time caps evinced by our petition and student walkout, they have for a second time formally rejected our proposed moratorium on time caps. “We see no reason to change our position on this matter,” they write, “and we thus respectfully reject this current proposal as well for the same reasons expressed earlier.” We will continue to push on this front, especially as our proposal would help meet teaching needs that are at risk of being left unfulfilled due to the hiring freeze.

The administration had three counter-proposals:

  • Job Postings – We are getting very close to an agreement on this article. The administration’s counter-proposal would remove their obligation to directly inform the union about exceptional cases in which a job is not posted. They also want to remove language guaranteeing an interview for unit members who meet posted qualifications for a position.
  • Employee Assistance Program – The main difference that remains between our positions on this article is whether or not the Corporation will need to bargain with us before making any changes to the status quo for the Employee Assistance Program in the future.
  • Access to Services – Remaining points of contention are the administration’s reluctance to provide storage space for workers (sufficiently secure for confidential materials, when necessary to maintain FERPA or HIPAA compliance), and sufficient library and email access periods after end of appointment.

We offered three counters-proposals and one new proposal:

  • Titles, Classifications, and Appointments – This counterproposal combines our previously separate proposals merging Titles and Classifications with Appointments and Reappointments. In this proposal, we re-asserted our vision for a promotion ladder for lecturers (which would include all current Preceptors, Lecturers, and Teaching Assistants who function as course heads) incorporating the most reasonable elements of the Corporation’s proposal to end time caps for Preceptors, but with broader scope. We also made adjustments to our original proposal to allow departments to meet short-term teaching needs (i.e., sabbatical replacements, leaves of absence) without resorting to the exploitative one-year positions that are all too common in academia. Last but not least, we rejected the Corporation’s attempt to hitch time cap elimination to their latest Discipline and Dismissal proposal, which denies that non-reappointment is a form of dismissal. We continue to maintain that non-reappointing workers, except under very specific circumstances, is the same thing as firing them, and should therefore be subject to the grievance process as a firing.
  • Principal Investigator Rights – We struck language from the administration’s previous proposal which would subject unit members to the “eligibility requirements” of their school before providing Principal Investigator Rights. We are concerned that leaving eligibility to the discretion of the schools essentially reinscribes the status quo, in which administrators have free reign to deny funding opportunities to our unit members for any reason.
  • Grievance and Arbitration – We are getting close to agreement on this article, with the main outstanding difference having to do with when the clock starts on the 35-business-day window to file a grievance.
  • NEW PROPOSAL: Protecting Disciplinary Vitality – Our proposal aims to protect us against large-scale restructuring or dismantling of academic programs without our input. It aims to maintain the vitality of Harvard’s wide range of disciplines, with particular concern for the smaller fields that might find themselves on the chopping block in periods of political pressure or financial austerity. Harvard’s lead negotiator immediately predicted that the administration was unlikely to entertain our proposal: “As a bargainable topic I don’t think this is going to fly very far. I’m sure the complexities of Harvard trying to decide … what it offers in its curriculum involves many many people, including faculty. This proposal would be a direct intrusion into that. I just wanted to telegraph that I don’t think that will get a lot of attention.” Protecting our workers and our fields of study from dismantling and DOGE-like mass firings is worth all of our attention—it’s our job as a union to stand up and keep the administration accountable to the University’s core missions.

At this time of uncertainty, when higher education is under attack, join the university community for an emergency rally organized by our colleagues in the Harvard AAUP chapter. Gather on the Widener steps tomorrow—on Thursday, March 13 at 4:30pm—to show unity and defend our values and our freedoms.

In solidarity,

The Harvard Academic Workers FAS/HMS/HDS Bargaining Committee