Established labor groups urge Harvard students to vote for collective bargaining
Several unions both on and off Harvard’s campus recently threw their support behind Harvard graduate students’ efforts to form a union of their own, a new development in the labor drama that has taken place at the university in recent months.
The four unions on Harvard’s campus—the Harvard University Security, Parking, and Museum Guards Union, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, the 32BJ chapter of the Service Employees International Union; and UNITE HERE Local 26—were all signatories to the letter, which “[urged] eligible graduate and undergraduate students to vote in favor of collective bargaining,” according to a report in The Harvard Crimson.
“The letter was also sponsored by two Boston-area labor groups which represent construction and trade workers working at Harvard, the Area Trades Council and the Building and Trades Council of the Metropolitan District,” The Crimson reported.
The proposed Harvard Graduate Student Union touts itself as “part of a growing national movement of student workers” that seeks to further “an exciting opportunity to strengthen the community of researchers and teachers” at the university.
“With the continuity of an organized union, we can project our voices beyond the campus and build a more connected community within it,” the proposed union’s website reads.
The new support for the graduate student union comes as a vote on collective bargaining nears next month. That vote will determine “whether eligible graduate teaching and research assistants and undergraduate course assistants will have the ability to collectively bargain with the University,” The Crimson reported last month.
In a letter of support to the burgeoning Harvard graduate student union, the local unions wrote: ““Let’s be perfectly clear: the best way to support other unions and move working people forward is to create and strengthen your union. When one union wins, all unions win.”
MORE: Georgetown refuses to recognize grad student union
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