said<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRead more: How Israel-Hamas Protests Engulfed Elite US Colleges: QuickTake<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UAW represents around 100,000 US academic employees, including around 5,000 Harvard PhD candidates and undergrads doing teaching and research. For weeks, students including UAW members maintained an encampment near the university president\u2019s office, demanding the school disclose and discontinue investments in Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something that\u2019s important to the members and something that\u2019s clearly linked to our workplace,\u201d Harvard history of science teaching fellow Sal Suri, vice president of HGSU, said in an interview. UAW members don\u2019t want their work or their paychecks entangled with Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza, Suri said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an emailed statement, Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said the school has informed the union that it doesn\u2019t see the encampment in Harvard Yard as related to student worker working conditions. As a result, the administration doesn\u2019t see it as a protected activity under federal law or the HGSU contract. The university said last week that the encampment violated school policies and created \u201csignificant disruption to the educational environment\u201d as students were taking final exams and getting ready for graduation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Protest leaders and university administrators announced Tuesday that they reached an agreement to take down the tents, with Harvard agreeing to answer questions about its endowment and to consider requests to reinstate suspended protesters, but not to divest. A spokesperson said the university will continue disciplinary proceedings that could result in official admonishments or expulsions. The school began suspending some protesters on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Activists have mounted similar protests at other colleges and universities across the US, including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In many cases, administrators have called in police to shut the protests down as well as suspended some students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UAW members employed by the University of California are voting this week on whether to authorize a strike over administrators\u2019 response to Gaza protests. Undergraduate student workers at the New School who\u2019ve been organizing with the UAW have been on strike since Monday protesting arrests of union members who were demonstrating in support of divestment, according to the union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Harvard case is the latest of several at schools including Brown University and the University of Southern California, in which campus unions allege that management is violating workers\u2019 rights by cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests. Alphabet Inc. is also facing allegations it illegally fired dozens of employees for their participation in a sit-in opposing the company\u2019s contract with the Israeli government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cases could test the boundaries of federal labor law, which prohibits retaliation against employees for taking collective action related to their working conditions, with or without a union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both Brown and USC have denied wrongdoing. Union members had no right to violate university rules as part of a \u201cprotest unrelated to their employment,\u201d a Brown spokesperson told Bloomberg Law last week. Alphabet has also denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NLRB\u2019s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, has taken an expansive view of what counts as \u201cprotected concerted activity\u201d under federal labor law. \u201cIf it\u2019s got a nexus to your working conditions, it\u2019s PCA,\u201d she said in response to a question last month about Gaza-related employee protests. \u201cWe need to be protecting as many workers as possible,\u201d said Abruzzo, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021. \u201cThe statute\u2019s very broad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
bostonglobe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Auto Workers filed a US labor board complaint over Harvard University\u2019s handling of pro-Palestinian protests, claiming the university violated grad students\u2019 rights as employees. In a Wednesday filing with the National Labor Relations Board, the UAW\u2019s Harvard Graduate Students Union accused the university of surveillance and retaliation against workplace-related collective action in its response to student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5781],"tags":[1151,8495,2109,9597,28438,2251,21056],"class_list":["post-27313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-gaza","tag-harvard","tag-protest","tag-repression","tag-u-s-labor-law","tag-unions","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27315,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27313\/revisions\/27315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}