About this episode

The episode discusses the indefinite strike of over 4,000 UAW members at Harvard University and the key issues they are fighting for.

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…

People in this episode

Guests: Sara Speller, Zoë Feder, Jacob Wolf

Topics covered

• labor rights
• graduate student workers
• union strikes
• Harvard University
• cost of living
• academic freedom

Keywords

• UAW strike
• Harvard University
• graduate students
• labor negotiations
• cost of living
• academic freedom
• union representation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Harvard University, Harvard Graduate Students Union, HGSU-UAW Local 5118

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