{"id":242,"date":"2026-06-02T05:06:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T05:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cambridgemovinghub.com\/?p=242"},"modified":"2026-06-02T05:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T05:06:51","slug":"harvard-grad-students-end-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cambridgemovinghub.com\/?p=242","title":{"rendered":"Harvard grad students end strike"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After 40 days of demonstrations, graduate student workers at Harvard University don\u2019t have a contract but felt negotiations had shifted palpably, allowing them to end their strike.<\/p>\n

Read more Cambridge police have to remove ShotSpotter. Officers aren\u2019t happy<\/a><\/p>\n

Harvard Graduate Students Union \u2013 United Auto Workers Local 5118, the union representing over 4,000 graduate student workers at Harvard, announced the end of its strike on Monday. The decision to stop striking came after hundreds of student workers picketed Harvard\u2019s school-wide commencement ceremony on Thursday and after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu chose not to speak at Harvard Law School\u2019s ceremony on Wednesday to avoid crossing the union\u2019s picket line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best-case scenario would\u2019ve been that we have a contract that would serve the needs of our members at this point and clearly, we\u2019re not there,\u201d said Denish Jaswal, union president. \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m feeling like there\u2019s room for us to get there in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over 80 percent of the union\u2019s voting members voted to end the strike in a membership meeting on Friday, according to Jaswal. The membership meeting immediately followed a bargaining session with administrators, who Jaswal said were \u201cmuch more willing\u201d to discuss the union\u2019s key issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was just a tonal shift and practical shift in how the university is handling negotiations, and I think that this is only possible [as] a result of the continued disruption,\u201d Jaswal said.<\/p>\n

The strike was union\u2019s longest since its inception in 2018. The strike began on April 21, after 15 months of negotiations between union members and administrators failed to yield a new contract. The union wants third-party investigations for harassment and discrimination claims, protections for non-citizen and disabled workers that align with federal law, wages on par with Harvard\u2019s peer institutions \u2014 including MIT and Brown University \u2014 and equitable pay between research assistants and teaching fellows.<\/p>\n

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The union said in a statement that disruptions caused by the strike \u2014 such as ungraded assignments and pauses on laboratory research \u2014 pushed administrators to engage with union members on some key demands. The union said administrators proposed several concessions, including a one-percent increase of their four-year raise offer and full dental coverage for PhD students. Jaswal said it also expanded access to funds for healthcare, childcare, emergencies and non-citizen worker expenses to all graduate students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile these proposals fall far short of the union\u2019s demands for a living wage and do not address workplace protections like grievability of harassment and discrimination or non-citizen protections, they were the first indication of engagement from the university on the union\u2019s priorities,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n

In a note to Harvard faculty on Monday, Jessica Soban, deputy provost, and Paul Curran, managing director of labor and employee relations, confirmed the end of the strike. They said student workers with ongoing work appointments returned to work on Monday and that Harvard \u201cremains committed to the ongoing negotiations with the student worker union and to bargaining in good faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaswal said that the union will meet this week and plans to continue meeting weekly to determine how members will organize to push for a fair contract. The strike, she said, has activated many union members and demonstrated that they are capable of \u201cdisrupting education in a very serious way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur members are a very powerful force,\u201d Jaswal said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been out here because we wanted to fight for these gains for our working conditions.\u201d She said the union will continue to push for a stronger contract.<\/p>\n

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After 40 days of demonstrations, graduate student workers at Harvard University don\u2019t have a contract but felt negotiations had shifted palpably, allowing them to end their strike. Read more Cambridge police have to remove ShotSpotter. Officers aren\u2019t happy Harvard Graduate Students Union \u2013 United Auto Workers Local 5118, the union representing over 4,000 graduate student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[12,144,108,28],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-education","tag-harvard-university","tag-labor","tag-strike"],"yoast_head":"\nHarvard grad students end strike - Cambridge Moving Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cambridgemovinghub.com\/?p=242\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harvard grad students end strike - Cambridge Moving Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After 40 days of demonstrations, graduate student workers at Harvard University don\u2019t have a contract but felt negotiations had shifted palpably, allowing them to end their strike. 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