MIT grad students picket for living wage, affordable health care

While MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Gov. Maura Healey kicked off the MIT Future Fest last Thursday — a five-day festival purporting to herald the future of technology —  MIT graduate students, and maintenance workers picketed outside the university’s Kresge Auditorium, protesting what they say has been months of fruitless negotiations over new contracts.

“They’re holding a celebration while graduate workers are 122 days without a contract,” said Ani Adabi, who is earning his PhD in material sciences.

Adabi said MIT’s initial offer to the graduate workers included a tripling of their health care deductibles and a small increase in wages that would leave them far below the $67,000-a-year minimum cost of living for the Boston area that MIT lists in its own Living Wage Calculator.

While graduate students at Brown, Princeton, Yale and John Hopkins University all earn within five percentage points of a living wage, MIT graduate students earn just 76% of what the university estimates it costs to live in the Greater Boston area.

In their negotiations, the graduate workers asked MIT for guarantees the university won’t cooperate with federal immigration officials to target international students, won’t share information with ICE and for a fair wage increase.

“So far, they’ve basically refused all our demands,” Adabi said.

A spokesperson for MIT sent a statement to the Flipside in response to questions.

“MIT is committed to retaining and attracting talent in all positions serving the Institute community, and that commitment extends to offering competitive compensation and benefits to our employees and to our graduate students,” the statement reads in part. “The Institute approaches bargaining in good faith, and we address specific points as part of ongoing negotiations.”

After more than four months of negotiations, the graduate workers, organized under United Electrical workers 256, last week collected more than 1,300 signatures pledging to strike.

The MIT facilities workers, organized under SEIU Local 32BJ, are facing a similarly hardline stance from the university, which has offered a $.50 an hour wage increase for workers earning less than $80,000 a year.

“They’ve basically insulted us,” said Jim Bradford, a chief steward at MIT who has been negotiating with the university since May. “I would like to see MIT show some appreciation of the work we do helping this university run.”

The negotiations at MIT come amid a year where workers across industries in the Boston area are struggling with management. Strikes and pickets this year have erupted at local higher education institutions including Lesley University, at hospitals including Boston Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s and at the Encore Casino in Everett.

While management some universities and hospitals cite a difficult economic climate, the workers at MIT note the university’s endowment has grown 10.3% over the last year and now stands at $29.2 billion.

Against that backdrop, MIT’s offerings of meagre pay raises and increased health care deductibles is all the more puzzling, says Rich Olszewski, director of Bargaining and Higher Education at 32BJ.

“It defies all reason,” he said. “Other high education employers have been more fair.”

Not all. Harvard Graduate Students Union—UAW started a strike authorization vote last week after 572 days of bargaining and a 40-day strike in April and May.

The MIT spokesperson said in a statement that the threat of federal funding cuts has put the university in a precarious position. 

“The Institute has had to adopt a careful stance on budgeting and hiring given the uncertain outlook for federal funding and policy,” the statement reads in part. “Even in such an environment, our bargaining team strives to reach agreement on contracts that are fair and recognize everyone’s contributions while reflecting the reality of the Institute’s financial situation.”

But Adabi says he believes the current political climate in which the Trump administration is targeting immigrants has given the university an opening to take a hardline stand against its largely immigrant graduate students.

“MIT is taking advantage of the political conditions to cut back on labor costs,” he said. “What we’re asking for is wage increases that would be less than .6% of MIT’s overall operating budget. We know they can afford it. We know they don’t have to transfer health care costs onto graduate students, and yet they’re choosing to.”