Harvard’s Student Workers Walk Out Again as Contract Talks Drag Into a Second Year

For the second time this year, thousands of Harvard’s graduate and undergraduate student workers have walked off the job. The strike began at midnight Tuesday, Oct. 27, after a final weekend of talks ended without a contract, and it lands one week before Massachusetts votes in a busy midterm election.

The Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW, known as HGSU, represents more than 4,000 teaching fellows, research assistants, course assistants and other student workers, according to The Harvard Crimson and Harvard Magazine. The union has been without a contract since June 2025. It set an 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline for an agreement, and when the deadline passed, the walkout began.

What is confirmed

Members voted 88 percent in favor of authorizing a strike in balloting that closed Oct. 6, according to Harvard Magazine. The union announced Oct. 16 that it would walk out on Oct. 27 unless a bargaining session on Oct. 22 produced a deal. That session, the 38th since negotiations began in 2025, did not. The State House News Service’s weekly calendar had also flagged Tuesday as the strike deadline.

This is HGSU’s second walkout of 2026. Last spring, the union held a 40-day strike, the longest in its history, which disrupted the end of the semester and several Commencement events before ending as summer began, still without a contract.

The Crimson reports that the union has not set an end date. HGSU President Denish Jaswal told the paper, “We are prepared to stay on strike until Harvard moves.”

Where the two sides stand

Pay. Harvard’s Oct. 22 package, its third comprehensive offer, would raise pay 6.1 percent when the contract is ratified, followed by 3 percent annual increases, according to The Crimson. Harvard says that adds up to nearly 16 percent compounded over the life of the contract. The union counters that 3 percent annual raises fall below inflation and would amount to a cut in real terms.

Benefits. The union says Harvard wants to end a set of benefit funds that help cover child care, health care and dental costs, and has not agreed to keep them, according to Harvard Magazine. Harvard says it has expanded benefits coverage for all Ph.D. students and created emergency hardship funds for all students.

Protections. HGSU is also seeking stronger support for noncitizen workers and an independent process for handling harassment and discrimination complaints.

Legality. In an Oct. 2 letter, Harvard’s labor relations office argued that a second strike over the same goals would be an “intermittent” strike that is not legally protected, The Crimson reports. Union leaders reject that view and point to a 2019 National Labor Relations Board decision. The dispute could matter if Harvard moves to discipline strikers, but no such action has been reported.

In a message to the community, Provost John F. Manning and Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick said another strike was unwarranted, that contingency guidance had been posted for faculty and that the university remains committed to bargaining.

A wider labor season in Cambridge

HGSU is not the only Harvard union at the table. Harvard Academic Workers-UAW, which represents other academic employees, has set a Nov. 10 strike deadline, and Harvard’s dining workers, represented by UNITE HERE Local 26, have passed a strike authorization vote, according to The Crimson. Three overlapping labor fights at one employer in a single semester is unusual, even for a campus with a long history of organizing.

The Boston Made Take

The core disagreement is arithmetic. A 6.1 percent bump followed by 3 percent a year looks generous in a headline, and Harvard can fairly point to the compounded total. But for workers in Cambridge, where rents are among the highest in the country, the union’s argument is that the raises after year one would trail living costs. Both claims can be true at once, which is why these talks have lasted 38 sessions.

The legal fight over whether a repeat strike is protected is the wild card. If Harvard presses the “intermittent” argument, the dispute could move from the bargaining table to the labor board, and that would almost certainly lengthen it.

For the regional economy, the immediate effects are narrow: undergraduate sections, grading and some research work slow down, while the university’s broader operations continue. The larger signal is that academic labor in Greater Boston, from Harvard to the hospital systems where nurses voted on strikes this fall, is pushing harder on wages as housing costs climb. Boston Made will watch whether the Nov. 10 deadline for the second union becomes the pressure point that finally moves both sides.

What it means for you

• Harvard students should check course sites and email for section, grading and office-hour changes; the university says contingency guidance has been sent to faculty.
• Parents of students should expect some disruption but not a shutdown. Lectures led by faculty generally continue during student worker strikes.
• Cambridge businesses near Harvard Square may see picket lines and rallies, but no closures have been announced.
• Anyone tracking local labor should mark Nov. 10, the strike deadline for Harvard Academic Workers-UAW.

Discussion

1. Should a university’s wealth factor into what it pays student workers, or should pay track the local job market?
2. Is a 3 percent annual raise fair in a city with Cambridge’s housing costs?
3. Do repeated strikes strengthen a union’s hand, or make an agreement harder to reach?