Harvard Club of Boston Workers Vote to Unionize in NLRB Election

More than 160 workers at the Harvard Club of Boston voted March 18 to join UFCW Local 1445 in an NLRB-supervised election, organizing a newly formed bargaining unit at the private, members-only Newbury Street club that serves Harvard alumni and their guests.

Employees pointed to two core grievances driving the vote: wages in the $21–$25 range and the absence of a contract since June 2024. That means workers have been operating without a negotiated agreement for roughly nine months heading into the vote, a stretch that leaves pay, benefits, and working conditions subject to management discretion rather than binding terms.

The union joining the fight is UFCW Local 1445, a regional affiliate of the United Food and Commercial Workers. The election was conducted under the formal NLRB process, which requires a petition, a determination of the appropriate bargaining unit, and a secret-ballot vote supervised by the federal labor board. An exact vote tally and formal certification status were not available at the time of this report.

Private social clubs occupy a particular corner of the hospitality industry: high-revenue, membership-dependent institutions where workers interact daily with some of the most professionally connected people in the country, yet often negotiate labor conditions with little public scrutiny. The Harvard Club of Boston, with its Newbury Street address and alumni base drawn from one of the world's wealthiest universities, fits that profile precisely.

What comes next is the harder part. A successful election vote triggers an obligation for the employer to bargain in good faith, but a first contract can take months or years to reach, and that process will likely define whether the vote translates into material improvements for the workers who cast ballots.