Dear Board of Student Advisors,
We, the undersigned HLS 1Ls, are writing to express our support for you in going on strike to win a first union contract. We appreciate how hard you work to teach us legal research and writing skills and to help us navigate our first year of law school. We believe you deserve fair compensation and a meaningful voice at work. We also believe that by going on strike to secure a fair contract, you will help build a more just and equitable Harvard for all students on campus.
Since coming to Harvard, we have learned about the graduate student union’s efforts to secure fair pay, comprehensive and affordable healthcare, and protections against discrimination and harassment. We have learned that BSAs earn just $2,625 per semester, which is less than half as much what teaching fellows in other departments earn for teaching one section. Moreover, while BSAs are paid significantly less than equivalent positions in other parts of the university, you have been asked to take on additional responsibilities this year with no additional pay. We are grateful to have more class time with you and we know that you enjoy teaching us, but we believe you deserve pay on par with your peers. We also know graduate students like you have often struggled to access the mental health, vision, dental, and dependent healthcare services that they deserve, and we have learned about the administration’s failures to respond to student workers’ complaints of discrimination and harassment.
Though we only recently arrived at HLS, we know that student workers have been working to secure a fair contract for a year and a half. And yet, the university administration has consistently stalled in negotiations and refused to address student workers’ core concerns. We believe that a strike authorization vote — and potentially a strike — has become a necessary step in the effort to secure key rights and benefits in our union contract. As future RAs, TAs, and BSAs, we have an obvious interest in making sure that graduate student workers are treated fairly, and we appreciate your efforts to that end.
Harvard Law School has repeatedly emphasized the essential roles that BSAs perform as writing and research instructors and as mentors and advisors for first-year law students during Orientation. As the wealthiest university in the world, Harvard University has no excuse for refusing to provide fair wages and benefits for its student employees who must balance their lives, their courses, and their important job responsibilities as BSAs. We believe that you, our BSAs, deserve to be compensated and treated fairly — and we know that your working conditions are our learning conditions. We therefore strongly support you in exercising your right to strike. By doing so, you will help advance the mission of HLS — “to educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society” — starting right here on campus.
In Solidarity,
335 Harvard Law School 1Ls ’22