Harvard grad student workers end 40-day strike without a contract

HGSU-UAW secured formal recognition following a 2018 NLRB election and subsequently negotiated its first contract with Harvard, covering graduate students who work as teaching fellows and research assistants. The current walkout centered on demands for higher wages, improved healthcare, and stronger job protections in a successor agreement - issues that Harvard and the union had not resolved after months of bargaining. The 40-day duration placed this among the longer recent graduate student strikes at major U.S. research universities. The action unfolded amid sustained national momentum in graduate worker organizing, with unions at multiple institutions pursuing or enforcing first and successor contracts in the same period.