NLRB Says No to Graduate Student Unions
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 8/5/2004
Labor and graduate student leaders expressed disappointment with a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision declining to extend collective bargaining rights to graduate student assistants.The decision reverses a 2000 NLRB ruling that graduate assistants at New York University were employees within the meaning of the federal labor laws. New York University was the first private university to form a graduate student union, providing the foundation for other organizing efforts of university students nationwide.
In a 3-2 decision along party lines, the NLRB found that national labor policy would not be effectuated by granting collective bargaining rights to graduate teaching assistants at Brown University because they are "primarily students and have primarily an educational, not economic, relationship with their university." In reaching its decision, the Board agreed with the arguments raised by Brown University that allowing graduate students to unionize would have a negative impact on the faculty and student relationship.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) had filed a petition seeking to represent approximately 450 graduate students at Brown who were employed as research assistants, teaching assistants, and proctors. An election was held in 2001. The NLRB's decision renders that election moot.
Expressing concern that this decision hurts workers, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger stated, "The right to join together to bargain for a better standard of living is a basic human right, the Labor Board should be protecting and expanding the rights of workers, not restricting them."
Frustrated by the ruling, Sheyda Jahanbani, a leader in the Graduate Employees Organization at Brown said, "We are teaching classes, grading papers, advising students and performing work which is critical to the educational mission of this institution, and we're entitled to the same rights as any other group of workers."
