It probably isn't surprising to many of you given the party being asked here, but–after a surprisingly long period of apparently mulling it over–Harvard University has officially denied voluntary recognition to the Harvard Undergraduate Workers Union, meaning they'll have to win a union election in the near future. In practice however, this only slightly delays recognition: HUWU commands the support of at least 62% of its prospective members.
The union, recently affiliated with Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers (HGSU-UAW) delivered its request for voluntary recognition on April 3, and did not hear back from the university until April 7 when it was denied. Normally, such attempts at recognition are pretty quickly shot down. To union members this is only the latest sign that Harvard is not really itching to fight against this specific unionization effort and will probably let them go. HUWU, it's worth noting, is only one of the university's ongoing campaigns. Another, the Harvard Academic Workers Union, is also organizing on campus right now and would–if it can win an election–cover more than 6,000 people at the university. By comparison, HUWU covers about 280 people, around 170 of which have signed union cards. If you were going to focus fire, it's obvious where you would: and it's not at HUWU. (Still, it's reasonable to assume Harvard will try and dissuade union members in some capacity.)
A major issue for the union are the lack of contracts undergraduate workers currently sign. While a university spokesperson refused to confirm when asked by the Harvard Crimson whether this was the case, that in and of itself seems to confirm the matter–and obviously, a lack of contract is a serious problem for consistency of pay and benefit from employment.