Harvard University graduate students picketed academic buildings and blocked delivery trucks at the university’s campuses in Cambridge and the Longwood Medical Area on Tuesday, the first day of a union strike poised to disrupt campus life.
Leaders of the 4,000-person Harvard Graduate Student Union encouraged masters and PhD students to walk off their jobs teaching classes and conducting research in a bid to bring an end to 14 months of glacial negotiations over a new union contract.
A last-ditch bargaining session went on for two hours Monday, to no avail, with little progress made on union proposals to enhance discrimination protections, shield noncitizen students from federal crackdowns, and raise wages well beyond the 10 percent bump that Harvard has offered over four years.
The strike formally began right after midnight Tuesday.
The escalation comes as final exams and commencement season approach at an already-difficult moment for Harvard. Its political standoff with the federal government has dragged on for a year now, raising threats to both the research funding that graduate workers often depend on and the security of international students. And its attorneys are still fighting lawsuit after lawsuit against the Trump White House.
Already, higher education at large is the fastest-growing unionized sector, an increasingly militant faction of organized labor that has in recent years launched similar strikes at the University of California system, Rutgers, Columbia, and Boston University, for example.
In Cambridge, the stakes for the graduate student strike only mounted after Harvard ran a deficit for the first time in five years and pursued ongoing budget cuts and staff layoffs.
The “tenuous” moment at Harvard is more reason to offer job protections and surety to graduate students, said Will Golay, a PhD candidate in astronomy, while picketing outside the Oxford Street Garage near Harvard Square.
“Only one of the 23 articles that we have proposed have had any agreement, and all the rest of them are still up for debate,” he said. “This strike is honestly not only about the issues we are fighting for, but also just about getting Harvard to come to the table and actually negotiate in good faith.”
On Tuesday, dozens of unionized students stocked with strike signs, megaphones, and a seemingly endless supply of Dunkin’ doughnuts flocked to picket lines outside the Harvard Science Center, Harvard Medical School campus buildings, and drop-off locations for truck deliveries near Harvard Square. Handouts distributed to passing undergraduates linked to a template for emails to their professors, asking them to “cancel, reschedule, or relocate class” in solidarity with the strike.
The university declined comment beyond a Friday statement, in which Harvard provost John Manning wrote that the school “remains committed” to reaching a deal and “will take steps to ensure that teaching, learning, and research continue” in the event of a strike.
“We believe any agreement must recognize the important contributions of our graduate student workers to Harvard’s teaching and research mission,” Manning continued.
Now without its full graduate workforce, Harvard may experience disruptions in grading, instructional work, and lab research. Union members are never required to strike, but striking students who spoke to the Globe said they have stepped back from teaching economics discussions, left assignments ungraded, and withheld data from a research project.
Nearly 60 percent of union members are PhD candidates who separately receive living expense support, in part because they teach classes.
The plaza north of Harvard Yard buzzed with supporters and signs advocating for “real recourse now” and against “bottom wages.” By a union tent sat a crafted boot not unlike the lucky one on the infamous John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard. Behind it was a slogan: “Touch the toe for a living wage.”
Juliana O’Neil, campaign manager for state Representative Marjorie Decker of Cambridge, stood alongside the picketing workers.
“[Decker] stands with Harvard against the federal government, but first and foremost, she’s always going to stand with the workers and the union members,” O’Neil said.
The union tensions on campus are not exclusive to graduate students.
Last fall, Harvard custodians went on a two-day strike, before securing a fresh contract in March. The Harvard Academic Workers, a union comprised mostly of non-tenure-track faculty, are now mulling a strike of their own with its first contract still in negotiation. And thousands of staffers in Harvard’s technical and clerical workers union are petitioning to halt layoffs and stave off proposed cuts.
Among the graduate workers, almost 80 percent of the membership participated in a strike authorization vote earlier this month; 96 percent of those who voted gave the union discretion to call for a walkout.
Harvard graduate students have gone on strike twice since they unionized with the United Auto Workers in 2018. Their 2019 walkout lasted nearly a month, followed by a three-day strike during Harvard parents weekend in 2021.
Today, the graduate student union is calling for a $55,000 annual wage floor for its members, some of whom currently earn as little as $26,000 each year, union spokesperson Jacob Wolf said.
In the Harvard statement, Manning reiterated that PhD students receive stipends, tuition grants, and insurance benefits “totaling at least $425,000 over a minimum of five years.” Support for living expenses exceeds $50,000 per year.
Cassidy Shubatt, a Harvard economics PhD student, said the push for a living wage is of utmost importance, especially since unionized graduate students just miles away at MIT earn far more than their Harvard peers.
“I am here to work on my research. I care about scholarship. I care about being part of the academic community,” Shubatt said. “It’s very hard for me to do that when I’m living on $2,000 a month and spending $1,400 a month on rent” in Allston.
Another big issue for the union is expanded protections for international students, including paid leave for immigration-related government appointments and increased legal support after “heightened risk of detention and deportation” of non-citizens.
Ben Blanco, a third-year PhD candidate in education, said the provision would further protect the one-fourth of graduate students who come to Harvard from abroad.
“What we saw last year was many noncitizen workers worried about their futures and their security here,” he said. “Their teaching positions were under threat. There were visa issues and fears about them losing their health care. It’s unacceptable.”
Harvard and its graduate student union have also tussled for months over the antidiscrimination policy in the contract, as the broader crackdown on “DEI” is underway nationwide. Union leaders are asking for expanded protections against harassment or retaliation for student workers.
Manning, the provost, said in his statement that the university-wide antidiscrimination policies should also apply to the union, and that offering a “distinct” set of rules for union members conflicts with “federal regulations . . . but also with the University’s policy that members of our community should have access to the same procedures.”
And the two sides are still disputing who is in the graduate student union to begin with. In July, Harvard stipulated that 800 students on research-based stipends are not considered employees, and therefore not union-eligible. The graduate workers union has continued to count those people in the unit. The union is also pushing now to incorporate “fair share fees” for students who benefit from union protections, but are not officially members.
State Senator Lydia Edwards, herself a UAW member, said she knows “exploitation is happening” at Harvard and that the university should step up for its students.
“They need basic protections like every other worker, and it’s not as though this institution doesn’t have the resources to pay them,” she said. “We’re not talking about a small mom-and-pop [business]. We’re talking about a billion-dollar institution that would not be able to function without these workers.”
Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_. Raphael Chinca can be reached at raphael.chinca@globe.com.