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Harvard filed an appeal this month on a ruling that it violated its graduate student union’s contract by excluding lab-based psychology Ph.D. students from the bargaining unit — the second time the University has asked a federal district court to overturn the decision.

The case concerns roughly 70 psychology workers — first- and second-year students, as well as those on dissertation fellowships and solely external funding — whom Harvard argues are not University employees.

The Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers initially brought a grievance in April 2022 alleging the workers had been unlawfully excluded from union representation.

Though an arbitrator ruled in the union’s favor last June — requiring Harvard to compensate workers for lost pay and benefits — Harvard appealed the ruling in July 2024. A district court upheld the arbitrator’s decision last month, and Harvard appealed again on June 20.

The appeal comes as Harvard hammers out contract articles with HGSU-UAW at the bargaining table, dragging out a case that has already lasted for much of the union’s current contract.

In the second appeal, Harvard’s counsel maintained — as in the first — that the arbitrator did not have the authority to add the psychology students to the bargaining unit in her initial ruling because only the National Labor Relations Board can determine whether students are employees. University lawyers also requested a stay on the previous judgment’s execution.

Following the arbitrator’s initial decision, Director of Labor and Employee Relations Paul R. Curran sent an email to psychology students in affected positions stating that they were not Harvard employees and were not included in the bargaining unit.

In the email, Curran wrote that Harvard had appealed the arbitrator’s decision and “intends to continue to treat Ph.D. students who receive funding such as [Graduate School of Arts and Sciences] graduate student stipends, graduate fellowships, or outside grants without a corresponding service commitment to the University as non-employees and therefore not within the bargaining unit.”

A federal judge’s ruling on Harvard’s first appeal held that the arbitrator’s decision could be overturned “only on a few, tightly circumscribed grounds,” none of which Harvard met in its arguments about employee status. The court said that the arbitrator’s decision, though “faintly sketched,” drew strongly enough from the union’s contract to be upheld.

In the appeal filed after the district court’s ruling, Harvard lawyers wrote that the district court’s decision violated public policy by extending the union’s contract to students without giving them the opportunity to decide whether they would like to be represented by the union. Without a stay, they wrote, Harvard “would be deprived of the very relief it sought in bringing this case and on appeal.”

“Harvard and the students themselves would be harmed by being compelled to be included in the bargaining unit,” the lawyers wrote, adding that students would not have the opportunity to decide whether they want to be represented by a union, nor by the HGSU-UAW in particular.

This is not the first time HGSU-UAW has accused Harvard of excluding workers from its bargaining unit. In 2021, the union filed a grievance accusing Harvard of excluding over 100 Population Health Sciences students from its bargaining unit that was eventually dismissed.

Harvard’s continued pursuit of the case comes as the University is also engaged in higher-profile legal battles — particularly in its fight with the Trump administration over international student enrollment and billions in federal funding cuts.

In part of the ruling, Harvard lawyers referenced the ongoing battle while arguing that including the psychology students in the unit would threaten their visa status because they are limited to working 20 hours a week.

“The Award blurs the line between what is work as an employee versus work as a student in pursuit of a degree,” Harvard lawyers wrote of the arbitrator’s original ruling. “While this may be more mundane than the well-publicized attacks on international students’ visa status, the Award is nonetheless problematic.”

The arbitrator had previously argued that all student workers in HGSU-UAW’s unit are limited to 20 hours of work per week, rendering the visa issue irrelevant.

HGSU-UAW president Sara V. Speller said that Harvard’s continued pursuit of the case seemed like an extravagance during its ongoing austerity measures.

“I don’t know what it costs to appeal to a higher court, but to me, it seems like the money could be placed literally anywhere else,” she said.

According to HGSU-UAW financial secretary Simon A. Warchol, HGSU-UAW itself has spent tens of thousands of dollars litigating the case. Union members referenced the case when describing the reasoning behind their agency shop proposal, saying that requiring all graduate workers to pay union fees would help defray costs for similar legal expenses.

According to Speller, the HGSU-UAW’s timeline in the case is unclear, but it is likely that it could take many months more.

“For them to then turn around and constantly be appealing this — and it’s not free to do so — while they’re also trying to do a hard bargain on things that don’t even cost money that we’re requesting for this next contract, it is a very frustrating thing,” she said. “It doesn’t really paint the case that Harvard cares for its student workers as much as they say they do.”

A University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the case.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.