NLRB to Grad Students at Private Colleges: You can Unionize!
Graduate student assistants now have the same protections as employees under federal labor law
On Tuesday, August 23, 2016, the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) ruled 3-1 in favor of a Columbia University graduate students’ petition to unionize, effectively allowing all graduate students nationwide to unionize at private colleges.
“The ruling reverses a misguided decision in 2004, which held that graduate assistants at Brown University were primarily students, not employees, and thus had no standing to form a union.
“… the earlier ruling simply accepted the university assertions that unionization was incompatible with academic life because it would intrude on matters like academic freedom, the relationship between graduate students and professors, grading procedures and exam formats.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/unions-in-the-ivory-tower.html
Columbia University has about 3,000 graduate assistants and Harvard, who has about the same number, is expecting graduate assistants to vote on forming a union soon. Nationwide, some 35,000 teaching and research assistants are unionized.
“The truth is graduate workers are the glue that holds higher education institutions together—without their labor, classes wouldn’t get taught, exams wouldn’t get graded and office hours wouldn’t be held.” ~American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten
View the NLRB ruling here:
https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-student-assistants-covered-nlra-0
You can see a weekly digest of NLRB decisions here, although as of this date, the August 23 decision is not listed:
https://www.nlrb.gov/cases-decisions/weekly-summaries-decisions