February 27 bargaining update

February 27, 2023

MIT’s bargaining team met with the GSU’s bargaining team for a 13th time on Monday, February 27. The discussion remained collegial and productive, and the two negotiating teams continued to make progress on the non-economic proposals that the GSU had put forth in previous sessions over the past five months.

Also, the union has now submitted its list of economic proposals.

The following are highlights from each of these areas of negotiations:

Non-Economic Proposals

• MIT’s bargaining team and the GSU continue to make progress toward tentative agreements on a number of articles, including student workload, health and safety, and support for international students.
• The two sides continue to have productive discussions regarding the pros and cons of different options for MIT’s discrimination and harassment policies and programs.
• MIT continues to carefully review the GSU’s outstanding non-economic proposals. We continue to seek common ground, and are committed, consistent with our guiding principles, to work diligently to reach agreement on these important and complex topics in our upcoming bargaining sessions.

Economic Proposals

• After five months of bargaining, the GSU has presented a set of economic proposals for the Institute’s consideration. MIT is carefully working to understand the wide-ranging proposals put forth by the GSU and to conduct a thorough economic analysis of the potential impacts on the Institute, our DLCs, and all the members of our community.
• The 33 new economic proposals shared this week cover a wide variety of topics, grouped into the general categories of compensation; tuition and fees; medical benefits; childcare; employee assistance; and commuting subsidies.
• MIT is analyzing the costs of these GSU requests. The next bargaining session is scheduled for Wednesday, March 8. Additional bargaining sessions are now scheduled through the end of April.