Over the past few months, the Graduate Student Union (GSU) Bargaining Committee has participated in multiple sessions of contract negotiations with MIT’s administration. In this time, we have worked through our non-economic proposals and the administration's counterproposals on many of the issues afflicting us as graduate student-workers at the Institute. We have made some important steps already through this process to improve our experience as grad workers here. At the same time, the members of the administration are dragging their feet on a number of key demands. Among these demands is a comprehensive non-discrimination clause and a grievance procedure that empowers us grad workers to address harassment and bullying effectively. We must not let them block these crucial demands.
MIT’s administration is proposing that our grievance procedure, the provision that gives the whole contract teeth, does not apply to any issue of discrimination, bullying, or harassment, including sexual harassment and assault. They also proposed to remove any commitment to promptness with respect to student disability accommodations, restricting the contract to codifying MIT’s existing accommodation policy. This is common throughout the MIT administration's counterproposals, where we see our strong proposal language undermined and chiseled at, reduced to reiterating current standards and policies full of holes.