Over 4,000 UAW members on strike at Harvard University

After 14 months of fruitless contract negotiations with the Harvard University administration, over 4,000 workers represented by the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW Local 5118) walked off the job on an indefinite strike on April 21. According to the union, "Graduate student workers will suspend teaching and research labor until Harvard's bargaining team takes substantive action in addressing the union's key issues: pay that keeps pace with the rising cost of living, recourse for harassment and discrimination, support for non-citizen students, protections for academic freedom, and 'fair share fees' to equitably distribute the expenses of union representation, among others." In this episode of Working People, we speak with three striking graduate student workers about the issues at the center of this strike, and about what it's like to live, work, and strike at the country's richest university amid political attacks from the federal government, scandals connecting high-ranking Harvard officials to Jeffrey Epstein, and a nationwide cost-of-living crisis.

Panelists include: Sara Speller, a fifth-year PhD student in the Music Department at Harvard and president of the Harvard Graduate Students Union; Zoë Feder, a seventh-year PhD student in the program in Biological & Biomedical Sciences at Harvard Medical School and a research assistant in the Microbiology Department; and Jacob Wolf, a third-year PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Additional links/info:

Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW Local 5118) website, Facebook page, X/Twitter page, TikTok, and Instagram
Harvard Graduate Students Union Strike Update/FAQ Zine
Lydialyle Gibson, Harvard Magazine, "Harvard graduate student workers strike"
Noah A. Ferris, The Harvard Crimson, "Grad students rally outside Garber's home as strike enters third week"
Hugo C. Chiasson & Elise A. Spenner, The Harvard Crimson, "Harvard promised a 'full' review of its Epstein ties. Its own files reveal what it left out"

Featured Music:

Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song

Credits:

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(405)

Want to save the world? Start by unionizing your workplace

"We are living in a pivotal moment in labor history," Cole Rockarts writes in their new book Fired Up About Unions. "At a time when corporations have more power, profit, and political influence than e...

30 Sep 53min

Toledo residents' lives upended by deadly Brent Industries explosions

On the morning of August 18, residents living near the Brent Industries facility in Toledo, Ohio, awoke to a series of massive explosions and a towering chemical fire in their backyards. Two Brent Ind...

23 Sep 57min

"Purge Palantir!": Union nurses warn Big Tech and Big Brother are invading our healthcare system

On August 27, registered nurses, patients, and community allies rallied and stopped traffic in cities around the US to demand that hospitals and elected officials cut all ties with artificial intellig...

16 Sep 43min

Why the stories working people tell ourselves about ourselves matter (Wheeling, WV Labor Symposium Speech)

Over the 2026 Labor Day weekend, Working People host and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez spoke at the Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium in Wheeling, West Virginia, organized by the Whee...

9 Sep 32min

Can anyone "make it" in today's music industry?

The 20th-century days of vinyl records, tape decks, CDs, Tower Records, and MTV have given way to our 21st-century age of MP3s and music streaming, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, and Ticketmaster. ...

2 Sep 56min

"Katrina 2.0": Residents of Gary, Indiana fight to survive without power for 12 days (and counting)

After a deadly "derecho" storm and flash floods slammed the midwest in early August, downing trees and power lines, tens of thousands of residents in and around Gary, Indiana have been surviving witho...

24 Aug 47min

No such thing as 'unskilled work': Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed' 25 years later

In her 2001 masterwork Nickel and Dimed, the late Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover to report on the daily realities working people in America face trying to get by on minimum-wage. After working as ...

19 Aug 46min

Layoffs, long waits, obscene prices: Vermont healthcare workers and patients face historic crisis

Frontline healthcare workers and the patients they serve are facing a major crisis at the University of Vermont Health network—the state's leading healthcare provider. "In June, UVM Health eliminated ...

13 Aug 27min