Washington, DC - United States Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey, along with Representatives Stephen F. Lynch, Niki Tsongas, Joe Kennedy III, and Katherine Clark, issued the following statement on this week's union election for Harvard University graduate students:

"In August, the National Labor Relations Board reversed a decade-old decision, giving graduate student workers at private universities the right to form a union.  And today, graduate students at Harvard University will be the first students after the NLRB's historic decision to exercise their right to vote to be represented by a union.

"The data on unions are crystal clear-when unions are strong, wages and benefits are too. Just last month, Harvard graduate students witnessed first-hand the benefits of collective bargaining when 750 union-represented Harvard cafeteria workers successfully negotiated for higher wages and more comprehensive health benefits.

"We hope all graduate students at Harvard will head to the polls and exercise their right to vote. Workers, bargaining through their unions, helped build our middle class, and workers, bargaining through their unions, will help rebuild it."